Question

Identify the sentence which uses the word ‘listen’ as a noun.
A. I always listen to you.
B. Have a listen to this song!
C. I have listened to this many times.
D. Listen!

Answer 1

Hint: When a word is used as the main subject of the sentence, it turns into a noun. A noun is a word that represents a person (Girl, Tom, Student), place (School, India, Sun) or thing (Bike, Table)

Complete answer:
Here, one needs to assess the correct sentence, where 'listen' is used as a noun. Hence, 'listen' should be the subject/object of the sentence and not an action.
“Listen” can be both verb and noun but is much more commonly a verb. A frequently heard phrase using “listen” as a noun is “Give it a listen,” which is advice to someone to listen to a radio program, speech, or a song maybe.
Option A - 'I always listen to you' is not our answer. The reason is, the subject 'I' does an action which I’d 'listen'. As 'listen' is used as an action word here, it is a verb. Therefore, option A is incorrect.
Option B - 'Have a listen to this song' is the correct answer. Here, the subject asks someone to have a 'listen', (for example, 'Have a coffee!'). Here the word 'listen' is an object and not an action (verb), hence it is used as a noun. Therefore option B is the correct answer.
Option C - 'I have listened to this many times' is also an incorrect option. The reason being, the subject 'I' is doing an action (to) 'have listened', hence, it is a verb and not a noun. Hence, option C is incorrect.
Option D - 'Listen!' is definitely a wrong choice. In this sentence, someone asks the other person to do an action of listening, hence it is absolutely used in a verb form and not a noun. Thus option D is incorrect.

The correct answer is Option B : ‘Have a listen to this song!’ In this sentence the word listen acts a noun.

Note:
There are some words in the English language that can be used as both nouns and verbs. “Listen” is also being used as a noun too just as the verbs, “try” or “go”. For example, “Give it a listen” or “Give it a try” or “Give it a go”.