What Is a Verb?

A verb is an action word. A verb tells what the subject of a sentence does, is, or what happens to it. To find a verb, ask yourself: what is the subject doing? The answer is the verb. In the sentence “Kayla smiled at the teacher,” the verb is smiled — it tells what Kayla did.

Some verbs tell what is happening to the subject rather than what the subject is doing. In “Maria was lost in the woods,” the verb phrase was lost tells what happened to Maria. Many sentences contain more than one verb: “Kyle runs with the football and shouts to his teammates while he plays outside” has three verbs — runs, shouts, and plays.

Some words help express action but cannot stand alone as verbs. These are called helping verbs. Phrases like is swimming, have brought, and was running each combine a helping verb with a main verb. The helping verb tells more about when or how the action is happening.

Verb Tenses

The tense of a verb tells when an action happens. Present tense shows what is happening right now. Past tense shows what happened before. Future tense shows what will happen later. For example: today I dance (present), yesterday I danced (past), tomorrow I will dance (future).

Most verbs form the past tense by adding -ed to the base form. However, many common English verbs are irregular — they do not follow the -ed rule. Instead, they change their spelling entirely. For example: run becomes ran, go becomes went, come becomes came, and give becomes gave.

The verbs be and have are two of the most important irregular verbs in English. The verb be changes to am, is, or are in the present and was or were in the past. The verb have changes to has in third-person singular present and had in the past. Mastering these two verbs is an important part of learning English grammar.

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