Virtuous English AcademyThe Body — A1 English Vocabulary
This A1 vocabulary list gathers 20 beginner English words about the body — from head to toe — parts of the human body. Every word comes with a simple definition, its British-English pronunciation and a natural example sentence, so you learn each one in real context. When you are ready, open the flashcards to practise and remember them for good.
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Using the body words in English
Body vocabulary is what you need at the doctor, at the pharmacy and in half the instructions you will ever be given in a classroom. Two things make it worth studying carefully rather than just memorising. English divides some parts differently from other languages — the arm and the hand are separate words, as are the leg and the foot — and English insists on a possessive where many languages use the.
What to watch out for
Say my hand, not the hand
When a body part belongs to someone, English marks it: Wash your hands, My head hurts, He broke his arm. Using the here — the head hurts — is understandable but sounds clinical, as though you were describing a diagram rather than yourself.
Foot and tooth change their vowel in the plural
One foot, two feet. One tooth, two teeth. These are not spelling exceptions to memorise separately — they belong to a very small group of old English nouns that make the plural by changing the vowel, and man/men and woman/women from the family list work the same way.
Hair is uncountable when it is on your head
Say My hair is long, not my hairs are long. The plural hairs means individual strands and is used mostly when something has gone wrong: There are hairs in my soup. The same pattern turns up across English — the mass and the individual item take different forms.
Words learners mix up
Two tables. The first is about where English cuts the body into pieces, which is probably not where your own language cuts it. The second is about three body words that quietly do a second job in ordinary sentences.
Where the arm stops and the hand starts
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| arm | From the shoulder down to the wrist. It does not include the hand. | He broke his arm. |
| hand | Everything below the wrist, fingers included. English never calls this part an arm. | Give me your hand. |
| finger | One of the four long ones. The short thick one is a thumb, and careful speakers do not count it as a finger. | I cut my finger. |
The same cut happens lower down: the leg stops at the ankle and the foot is a separate word, with the toes on the foot rather than on the leg. Plenty of languages use one word for arm-and-hand and one for leg-and-foot, so saying I hurt my arm when you mean your hand sends a doctor to the wrong place.
Three words with a second job
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| back | The part of you behind. It is also a direction, in come back and go back, and a place, in at the back. | My back hurts when I sit. |
| face | The front of your head. As a verb it means to turn towards something. | Wash your face before bed. |
| heart | The organ that pumps blood, and also where English keeps feelings and courage. | The doctor listened to my heart. |
You will meet the second meanings long before the medical ones. I’ll be back has nothing to do with your spine, and learn it by heart means memorise it. Take the body meaning as the main one and let the rest arrive as whole phrases rather than as rules.
Collocations that sound natural
Four body words and the verbs English pairs them with. The pairing is habit, not logic, so store the two words together.
hair
long hairdark hairwash your hairbrush your hairhave your hair cut
If a hairdresser did it, say I had my hair cut. I cut my hair tells people you held the scissors yourself, which is a different story.
hand
wash your handshold handsput up your handshake hands
In a British classroom you put up your hand; Americans raise theirs. Shake hands stays plural even though each person uses only one.
eye
blue eyesclose your eyesopen your eyeskeep an eye on
Eye colour is nearly always plural: She has green eyes. A single eye gets mentioned only when something has gone wrong with that one.
tooth
brush your teetha bad toothlose a tooththe front teeth
British children are told to clean your teeth and Americans say brush. Both are used in Britain now, and neither will confuse anybody.
Where each word belongs
Five words that need a note about who says them and when. Two of them have a children’s version, and two live almost entirely inside fixed phrases.
- stomachAdult · medicalThe grown-up word, used mainly at the doctor’s. Children and their parents say tummy. For the pain everybody says stomachache, written as one word.
- noseEveryday · with <em>blow</em>The verb is blow your nose, never clean it. Pointing at your own nose to mean "me" is not an English gesture either — English speakers point at their chest.
- headTwo jobsThe body part, and the person in charge: the head of a school. Use your head means think. A pain there is a headache, one word and very common.
- mouthInstructionsIt turns up mostly in things people ask you to do — Open your mouth at the dentist, Don’t talk with your mouth full at the table. It is rarely the subject of a sentence.
- footFixed phrasesThe plural is feet, but on foot keeps the singular and takes no the: I go to school on foot. It is also an old measurement, so a person can be six foot tall.
Sentences to try
Four frames that cover describing yourself and explaining a problem.
- My head hurts.
- She has got long, dark hair and green eyes.
- Please wash your hands before dinner.
- I have got a pain in my back.
Questions about the body vocabulary
What are the plurals of foot and tooth?
Feet and teeth. Both change the vowel rather than adding -s, so foots and tooths are always wrong. They belong to the same small family as man/men, woman/women, child/children and mouse/mice — perhaps a dozen words in total, all of them very common, which is precisely why they survived while the rest regularised.
Do I say "my hair is" or "my hairs are"?
My hair is. In English the hair on your head is treated as one mass, not as a collection of individual items, so it takes a singular verb and no plural -s: My hair is short, Her hair is beautiful. The plural hairs means separate strands and usually appears when they are somewhere unwanted.
How do I say something hurts in English?
Three patterns cover almost everything. My back hurts uses the body part as the subject. I have got a headache uses a fixed noun — headache, toothache, stomachache and backache all exist as single words. And I have got a pain in my shoulder works for anywhere without its own noun. All three are natural; the first is the shortest and the most used.