One direct way to confirm that case is a keyword rather than a function or a datatype is to look at how it behaves inside actual Java code and compare that behavior to what each category would allow.
A typical switch block in Java looks like this:
switch (day) {
case 1: System.out.println("Monday"); break;
case 2: System.out.println("Tuesday"); break;
default: System.out.println("Invalid");
}
Notice that case is always followed directly by a constant value and a colon, never by parentheses the way a function call such as println() is written, and it never declares a value type the way int or double would. If you try to declare a variable named case, such as writing int case = 5;, the Java compiler rejects it immediately with a syntax error, because case is permanently reserved by the language and cannot be reused as an identifier.
This behavior, being permanently reserved, never callable, and never describing a value type, is the exact definition of a keyword in Java.
Therefore, the correct answer is Key word in java.