What Is a Verb? Examples and Definitions
When your teacher or friends talk about verbs, what do they mean? And would you believe that many people use the term incorrectly?
We’re learning a little bit about English grammar today! I bet you already know most of this, but if you’re a learner, please read to the end to flesh out your knowledge. If you’re a teacher, please let me know your thoughts.
ℹ️ What is a Verb?
TL;DR: A verb is a word that is used with a noun to express action (for example, run), a state (for example, is), or an occurrence (for example, became).
When we think of verbs, we often think of so-called action words, like run, jump, sing, and so on. Action verbs are straightforward to conceptualize because we can imagine the action and typically see the action as well—when someone jumps, we can see them jump. Note that many actions, however, aren’t visible, such as thinking or missing someone.
But verbs are much more varied than just action words—verbs can also be used to show “states” or occurrences. For example, if I say that Elsa is lonely, then the verb is is used to connect the subject Elsa with the adjective lonely. Notice that the verb is isn’t showing an action; in this case, we can’t see Elsa doing anything. Rather, she feels something, i.e., she is in a state of loneliness. Verbs can also show occurrences, as in He became the king.
Now, some good news—most of you can stop here; I’ve included the basic definition of a verb, and if you know this, you’re already ahead of the game.
If you’d like to learn even more, please read on!
ℹ️ Why Are Verbs So Important?
TL;DR: Clauses and sentences require verbs.
Verbs are vital to communication; they pair with nouns to express important information, like Sofia graduated or We are getting ready now. Without verbs, we would just have lonely nouns not doing anything, not feeling anything, and generally not getting anywhere at all.
All clauses in English require a verb.
Refresher: A clause is a subject and a finite verb together; a clause can be a sentence by itself, or it can be used with another clause.
It’s possible that sometimes utterances don’t contain a verb that you can hear or see, but those situations are generally easily explainable, and usually are common to spoken English, not standard academic English, which we are most focused on now.
Modern, spoken, colloquial English, the way you might speak with friends, is actually incredibly complex, arguably more so than academic English.
In short, this means that if you have a noun and a verb, you can make a full sentence!
Finally, when you have a verb in a sentence, it generally changes its form, for example, from is to were, depending on the number of the subject or the time of the verb.
Let’s learn a few more important concepts.
ℹ️ What Is an Infinitive Verb?
TL;DR: Infinitive = to + verb.
Note: This is pretty important. Remember this one!
The most basic form of the verb in English is the infinitive. If someone asks you to name three verbs, you’ll probably give three ‘bare infinitives’. So what is an infinitive, actually?
In English, the verb with the particle to is called an infinitive. So to do, to make, to be, and so on are all infinitives. The infinitive form is called this (related to the word infinite, not surprisingly) because the infinitive by itself does not carry more information beyond the definition the dictionary would provide.
Note that some teachers may refer to the form of the infinitive without the to particle, for example, do, make, be, and so on. In this case, they may call this by one of various terms:
the bare infinitive
the base form
the dictionary form
or some other term.
One difficulty with teaching grammar is the lack of standardization of terms among educators. Imagine if one teacher referred to an exponent as an exponent, but another teacher called it a little, up-in-the-air number. This is what it’s like for grammar teachers sometimes!
So the counterpart to the infinitive form of the verb is the finite verb, which is a term not frequently taught in K-12 education (in the US, anyway). Let’s learn about finite verbs next.
ℹ️ What Is a Finite Verb?
TL;DR: Finite verb = a verb that shows tense or person.
Don’t get intimidated by the term finite; it may sound fancy, but you use finite verbs daily, and yes, the etymology is the same as the math term finite that you’re probably more familiar with.
A finite verb, sometimes called a conjugated verb, is simply the form of the verb that is paired with a noun (i.e., a subject) to express an idea (and thereby make a clause). Finite verbs carry extra information that non-finite verbs do not.
Let’s look at some examples of finite verbs; they are bolded in the following sentences:
Raina finished her homework. - The finite verb finished is paired with the third-person singular subject Raina, and has an -ed, so we know from the verb by itself that the action happened in the past. So this is a past-tense verb.
Jon is late again. - The finite verb is goes with the third-person singular, and is in present tense.
“Alexa, start a timer for 10 minutes and 30 seconds!” - The finite verb here is start; this is tricky because the actual subject, you, doesn’t appear in the sentence; this is the one situation in standard English in which we don’t require a subject, and in fact, it would be ungrammatical to include one for this meaning. (For example, you would not say *Alexa, you start a timer for 10 minutes and 30 seconds to tell Alexa to do something.)
ℹ️ Introduction to Verb Tenses
TL;DR: Verb tenses show when something happened. Remember that tense = time.
Like many languages (but not all, notably Chinese languages), English has three main verb tenses—past, present, and future. These terms are self-evident I think, but to be sure—finite verbs change their form to show whether the verb occurred in the past, present, or future.
But first, before we continue—it’s helpful to understand that the word tense when we’re talking about verb tenses basically just means time. So right now, we’re talking about verb “times.”
Examples of verb tenses:
Mo went to school. - went is in the past tense because Mo went to school in the past.
Mo is at school. - is is in the present tense because Mo is currently at school.
Mo will go to school later. - will go, which requires two words to express, is in the future tense because Mo will go in the future.
To keep things simple, I will stop here; the main thing to remember is that verbs in English can be divided into three main tenses—past, present, and future.
ℹ️ Introduction to Subject-Verb Agreement
TL;DR: Subject-verb agreement refers to changing the verb form to match the subject, for example, She works vs They work.
Have you noticed that in academic English, we would say that vocabulary is important, not that *vocabulary be important or *vocabulary are important? There’s a reason for this—in English, the verb changes a little or a lot (or sometimes not at all, actually) depending on the person and number of the subject.
This can get complex, so we will cover the details in a future lesson. Here is the general idea of how subject-verb agreement works:
🔧 Regular Verbs, Present Tense
TL;DR: All verb forms for present tense regular verbs take the same form, except for third-person singular, which gets an -s at the end of the verb.
I walk
you walk
⭐️ she/he/it walks 👈️ This one is different from all the rest!
we walk
you walk
they walk
🔧 Regular Verbs, Past Tense
TL;DR: All verb forms for past tense regular verbs take the same form: add -ed to the end.
I walked
you walked
she/he/it walked
we walked
you walked
they walked
Yes, all forms of the past tense of regular verbs are the same.
🌍️ All Verbs, Future Tense
TL;DR: All verb forms for the future tense (regular or irregular) verbs take the same form: add the modal will before the bare infinitive.
I will walk
you will walk
she/he/it will walk
we will walk
you will walk
they will walk
Again, these all follow the same pattern.
🔀 Irregular Verbs
Irregular verbs are, well, irregular. There are patterns, but many of them you will just end up memorizing. Here are a few examples:
be in present tense: I am, you are, she/he/it is, we are, you are, they are
be in past tense: I was, you were, she/he/it was, we were, you were, they were
be in future tense: I will be, you will be, she/he/it will be, we will be, you will be, they will be
🚧 Most Common Verb Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)
Even the best writers make mistakes relating to verbs. Here are the top ones to look out for on the SAT:
1️⃣ Subject-Verb Mismatch with “Sneaky” Nouns
Prepositional phrases, compound subjects, and “filler” in general create distance between the subject and the verb, which increases the chances of erring in verb form.
Wrong: The box of cookies
wereon the counter.Right: The box of cookies was on the counter.
2️⃣ Treating there or here as the Subject
For the existential there, the subject comes after the verb.
Wrong: There
isthree options on the form.Right: There are three options on the form.
3️⃣ Verb-Tense Inconsistency
Stay consistent unless you have a clear reason to change the timeline.
Wrong: She
startsthe experiment and recorded the data.Right: She started the experiment and recorded the data.
4️⃣ Confusing Irregular Past Participles and Past-Tense Verbs
Sit → sat → sat; write → wrote → written. Mixing forms is a top SAT trap.
Wrong: She has
wrotethree drafts.Right: She has written three drafts.
Wrong: I have never
drankblack tea.Right: I have never drunk black tea.
5️⃣ Incorrect Past Perfect
This one can get tricky! A quick rule is that the past perfect requires two verbs, and the one more in the past gets the had.
Wrong: I
hadalready eaten lunch today.Right: I have already eaten lunch today.
6️⃣ Treating every, each, everyone as Singular
each and every are singular.
These subjects look plural but are grammatically singular:
Wrong: Each of the players
havea locker.Right: Each of the players has a locker.
🔧 Quick Fix Checklist
Here’s how to spot many of the errors:
Find the subject; ignore the entire prepositional phrase and other filler.
Identify the verb in every clause; check its tense and number.
Read the subject and verb alone, for example The box… is empty.
For good measure, memorize the top irregular past participles: written, gone, eaten, begun, spoken, taken, chosen, and make sure you know the difference between them and their past-tense forms.
🔮 Up Next
In our next post we’ll learns about nouns, which verbs need to pair with.
Got a verb question that still bugs you? Drop it in the comments, and I’ll work it into the series!