VERB

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does verb mean? 

• VERB (noun)
  The noun VERB has 2 senses:

1. the word class that serves as the predicate of a sentence

2. a content word that denotes an action, occurrence, or state of existence

  Familiarity information: VERB used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• VERB (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The word class that serves as the predicate of a sentence

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("verb" is a kind of...):

major form class (any of the major parts of speech of traditional grammar)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "verb"):

auxiliary verb (a verb that combines with another verb in a verb phrase to help form tense, mood, voice, or condition of the verb it combines with)

infinitive (the uninflected form of the verb)

participial; participle (a non-finite form of the verb; in English it is used adjectivally and to form compound tenses)

phrasal verb (an English verb followed by one or more particles where the combination behaves as a syntactic and semantic unit)

transitive; transitive verb; transitive verb form (a verb (or verb construction) that requires an object in order to be grammatical)

intransitive; intransitive verb; intransitive verb form (a verb (or verb construction) that does not take an object)

Holonyms ("verb" is a part of...):

verb (a content word that denotes an action, occurrence, or state of existence)

Holonyms ("verb" is a member of...):

conjugation (the inflection of verbs)

Derivation:

verbal (of or relating to or formed from a verb)

verbify (make into a verb)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A content word that denotes an action, occurrence, or state of existence

Classified under:

Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents

Hypernyms ("verb" is a kind of...):

content word; open-class word (a word to which an independent meaning can be assigned)

Meronyms (parts of "verb"):

verb (the word class that serves as the predicate of a sentence)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "verb"):

reflexive verb (a verb whose agent performs an action that is directed at the agent)

copula; copulative; linking verb (an equating verb (such as 'be' or 'become') that links the subject with the complement of a sentence)

frequentative (a verb form that serves to express frequent repetition of an action)

Derivation:

verbal (of or relating to or formed from a verb)

verbify (make into a verb)

 Context examples 

No more would he conjugate the verb to do in every mood and tense.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

He was mastered by the verb "to eat." He was hunger-mad.

(Love of Life and Other Stories, by Jack London)

I use the verb 'to torment,' as I observed to be your own method, instead of 'to instruct,' supposing them to be now admitted as synonymous.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

I learned the first two tenses of the verb Etre, and sketched my first cottage (whose walls, by-the- bye, outrivalled in slope those of the leaning tower of Pisa), on the same day.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The first project was, to shorten discourse, by cutting polysyllables into one, and leaving out verbs and participles, because, in reality, all things imaginable are but norms.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Precisely. And the man who wrote the note is a German. Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence—‘This account of you we have from all quarters received.’ A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Jonathan asks me to send his 'respectful duty,' but I do not think that is good enough from the junior partner of the important firm Hawkins & Harker; and so, as you love me, and he loves me, and I love you with all the moods and tenses of the verb, I send you simply his 'love' instead.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

The girl had gone, and I thought he had also, it was so still, and I was busily gabbling over a verb, and rocking to and fro in a most absurd way, when a little crow made me look up, and there was Mr. Bhaer looking and laughing quietly, while he made signs to Tina not to betray him.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

It appeared, in answer to my inquiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as constituting a most solemn imprecation.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

When they came opposite our stern, Wolf Larsen greeted them with a wave of the hand, and cried: Come on board and have a ’gam’! “To gam,” among the sealing-schooners, is a substitute for the verbs “to visit,” “to gossip.”

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)