What Are Verbs? The Definitive Guide

A verb is a word that indicates action, occurrence, or existence. Verbs are essential in sentences to help provide a complete thought. 

There are many types and tenses of verbs, which provide a wide range of meanings in writing. Verbs not only express what the subject of a sentence is doing, feeling or experiencing, but a verb’s tense also tells the reader when.  

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A Brief Overview of Verb Tenses

There are a lot of verb tenses in grammar, and they all help to express when an action is happening. Verb tenses can also express temporal relationships between events: when one action or event happened in relation to another action or event.

There are 12 total tenses, which are combinations of these different groupings of verb types:

Present, past and future Tenses

Verbs express three basic expressions of time:

• Present: Actions or events that are currently happening or happen regularly.
• Past: Actions or events that have already happened in the past.
• Future: Actions or events that will happen in the future. 

Simple, perfect and progressive tenses

Verbs have three basic ways to relate actions to one another:

• Simple tense: No complex time relationship. Action is in the present, past, or future.
• Perfect tense: Expresses actions completed or ongoing. Connects the action to other points in time.
• Progressive tense: Expresses actions that are in progress or happening simultaneously.

The 12 Verb Tenses

The six tenses above can be paired in different combinations to form different expressions of actions in time. 

In perfect and progressive tenses, the verb goes further to show how an action or event is related to another action or event in time: 

• Simple Present Tense: General truths, states of being, repetitive actions, directions, and other straightforward present events/actions.
• Simple Past Tense: Completed actions or events performed in the past.  
• Simple Future Tense: Actions or events that will be performed in the future. 
• Present Perfect Tense: Events/actions that happened at an unspecified point in the past and may or may not continue in the future. 
• Past Perfect Tense: Past event/action that happened before another past action.
• Future Perfect Tense: Two future events/actions at different times.
• Present Progressive: Action/event in progress or in a future time
• Past Progressive: A past action in progress.
• Future Progressive: An ongoing action in the future.
• Present Perfect Progressive: A continuous past action that occurred until recently or is still occurring
• Past Perfect Progressive: Two past actions: one action was in progress until the other occurred and interrupted or changed it
• Future Perfect Progressive: A continuous action in the future that will be completed further in the future.

Each verb tense has its own construction to help identify it. Oftentimes, this is displayed in the ending of the verb or by using the past participle of the verb (-ing) along with another type of verb: an auxiliary or helping verb. These are just some of the verb types in grammar. 

8 Types of Verbs

There are many types of verbs, and all have different functions within a sentence. 

1. Action verbs

Action verbs or dynamic verbs express something that is happening. They can be physical or mental actions but always describe a subject's behavior or activity. 

Examples of action verbs: eat, run, think, catch, read, wonder, build, jump

2. Stative verbs

Stative verbs express a subject’s state of being, perception, or feeling,  rather than an action.

Examples of stative verbs: believe, know, want, dislike, like, prefer, seem, realize

3. Linking verbs

Linking verbs don’t express an action but do serve as the verb in a sentence by linking the subject to the rest of the sentence.

Examples of linking verbs: am, be, is, are, were, was, become

4. Helping/auxiliary verbs

Auxiliary verbs act as helpers to other verbs in a sentence. They are often used to form the perfect and progressive tenses.

Examples of auxiliary verbs: have, had, can, may, must, shall, will, has, could, might, would

5. Transitive and intransitive verbs

Transitive verbs require a direct object to complete their full meaning or action, whereas intransitive verbs don’t have/need a direct object.

Examples of a transitive verb: She wrote a letter. / He speaks Italian fluently.

Examples of an intransitive verb: She ran fast. / They sleep a lot.

6. Regular and irregular verbs

In relation to verbs, regular and irregular refer to how a verb is changed to create the past tense and past participle forms. Regular verbs add -d or -ed, while irregular verbs have no predictable pattern.

Example of a regular verb: They created a new website. / He had cooked the meal.

Examples of an irregular verb: The bird sang sweetly. / The cat crept into the darkness.

7. Phrasal Verbs

Phrasal verbs take on a new meeting when they are part of a verb phrase. For instance, “get” means one thing, but “get up” has a meaning of its own. 

Examples of phrasal verbs: give up, bring up, get together, hold back, pick out, bear with

8. Past and present participle

A past participle isn’t a verb type but plays a significant role in forming the perfect and progressive verb tenses. It is created by adding -ed to regular verbs. Irregular verbs have various endings in the past participle (-en, -t, -n, for example). Present participles always end in -ing for all verbs.

Examples of past participles: (regular) jumped, talked / (irregular) given, slept, run

Examples of present participles: jumping, talking, giving, sleeping, running

Final thoughts

Verbs are the driving force behind language. They are essential to every sentence and describe the actions, events, and states of being. They bring writing to life. While all the different verb tenses and their names can be overwhelming, they are more manageable in practice than they appear. 

A grammar checker can be a great help in identifying and correcting verb tense errors to ensure all the action in your writing comes across clearly.

Then, learn more grammar best practices in our top resources:

• 6 Types of Adverbs: How to Use Adverbs in Writing
• Best Practices for Using Synonyms in Writing
• What Are Nouns? 12 Types of Nouns
• How to Write a Compound Adjective