Verb Definition, Examples, Types of Verbs and Words

Verb Definition

Verb Definition: It’s a very common question what verb is? A verb is a word or group of words that is used in a sentence to indicate that something happens or exists, for example, happen, be, do, etc. In simple terms, a word that describes an action or the occurrence of an event is called a verb. In English Grammar, a verb is a word that we use to refer to actions (what things do) and states of being (how things are).

For instance, consider a few simple sentences,

“I am reading this article.” In this sentence, ‘reading’ is a verb describing a usual action.

“Jacob walks in the morning”. In this sentence, ‘walks’ is a verb describing a usual action

“Stephen is going to school”. In this sentence, ‘going’ is a verb describing a condition of action.

Verb Examples

Verbs are an important part of the English language and is classified under Parts of Speech. Let’s consider some more verb examples in the following table.

Sentence	Verb Used
He complained to the police.	complained
School offers many opportunities to learn new skills.	offers, learn
Whatever jogging regularly to reduce fat.	jogging, reduce
His friend was trembling with anger when he lost all his books while travelling to Delhi.	trembling, lost, travelling
The radio broadcast last night that it will rain on Monday.	broadcast, rain

Verb Examples List

A detailed list of Verb Examples is discussed below. You can learn the verb forms from the table given below to increase your English vocabulary.

Verb Examples
Drink	Read
Sing	Sit
Ring	Cut
Choose	Buy
Write	Mark
Gain	Match
Grant	Move
Cool	Enjoy
Believe	Explain
Bring	Open
Admire	Order
Fail	Offer
Break	Draw
Agree	Push
Amaze	Prefer
Amuse	Plan
Appear	Play
Arrive	Throw
Ask	RingRepair
Behave	Become
Borrow	Flee
Blame	Stand
Belong	Pull
Believe	Save
Call	Slow
Cool	Sneeze
Carry	Solve
Cause	Start
Clear	Stop
Climb	Draw
Enjoy	Plan
Explain	Play
Hunt	Become
Ignore	Flee
FightImprove	Save
Impress	Slow
Invite	Sneeze
Jog	Solve
Jump	Start
Join	Stop
Knock	Tumble
Last	Enjoy
Label	Explain
Learn	Open
Live	Order
Look	Offer
Love	Push
Prefer	Provide

Verb Meaning in Hindi

क्रिया is the Hindi translation of a Verb. A Verb is a part of speech that is been taught in both English & Hindi subjects. The definition or meaning of Verb (क्रिया) is explained as- A verb is a word that is used to express some action, feeling or existence. It tells us something about the topic in one sentence. As; Sleeping, waking up, reading, walking, dancing, talking, understanding, asking etc.

Types of Verb

The are two types of verbs in English Grammar. The classification is as follows.

Sometimes the Auxiliary Verbs are also known as helping verbs. There is a further classification of Auxiliary Verbs and Main Verbs as follows.

Auxiliary Verbs	1-Primary
	2-Modal

Main Verbs	1-Intransitive
	2-Transitive

Auxiliary Verb

As told earlier, auxiliary verbs are more commonly known as helping verbs. So as the name suggests, the helping verbs or the auxiliary verbs are used to support the main verb to describe an action. Let’s understand through an example. Consider the following sentence,

“Amit is jogging regularly to reduce fat.”

Here ‘Jogging’ is the main verb that describes the action being done by Amit and “is” is the auxiliary verb. This makes the sentence more apparent by telling that the action is being done in the present time. Suppose the above sentence would have been written like this,

“Amit was jogging regularly to reduce fat.”

Here the main verb (jogging) is the same but the auxiliary verb is changed to “was”. By doing so, it becomes apparent that the action was being done in the past. Now we have a rough idea of how Auxiliary verbs (Helping Verbs) assist the main verb to describe the action more specifically. Let’s discuss the main verbs.

Main Verb

Whenever a sentence describes some action, there has to be a main verb in the sentence. The main verb expresses or describes the principal action being done by the subject. It tells about the basic purpose of the sentence. Let’s understand through some examples. Consider the following sentences,

“He was trembling in the cold weather.”

In this sentence, “trembling” is the main verb. It tells about the main idea and action of the sentence. It tells what action is being done by the subject.

Transitive and Intransitive Verbs: The main difference between transitive and intransitive verbs is that with transitive verbs there has to be an object while with intransitive verbs the object is not required. Let’s understand through an example,

“The principal discussed the indiscipline issue with the teachers.” (Correct)

“The principal discussed with the teachers.” (Incorrect)

In these two sentences, the main verb is “discussed”, which can’t be used without an object. The verb “discuss” requires an object with it. The second sentence seems confusing as it’s not clear what was discussed with the teachers.

Verb Forms

Most of the verbs have three forms. The three verb forms are given below.

1. Present Verb

2. Past Verb

3. Past Participle Verb

For a particular verb, these forms can be the same or different. See the below table

First Form	Second Form	Third Form
Eat	Ate	Eaten
Cut	Cut	Cut
blow	blew	Blown
drink	drank	Drunk
ring	rang	rung
walk	walked	walked
give	gave	given
treat	treated	treated
fall	fell	fallen
ride	rode	riding
do	did	done

Phrasal Verbs

When an adverb or a preposition is combined with a verb then the whole term gives a new meaning. These types of terms are called phrasal verbs. For example,

“Break down – get upset”

Here the verb ‘break’ is combined with the preposition ‘down’. Individually these two terms have different meanings but when these two words are combined together, the whole phrase gives a different meaning.

List of Important Phrasal Verbs

Phrasal Verb	Meaning	Sentence Use
Call Around	Call different people	They called around but nobody helped them.
Break into	Enter forcibly	The thief entered into the house.
Check out	Investigate	The officer checks out the crime scene.
Get back	Return	When are you getting back from the picnic?
Get up	Get out of bed	We should get up early in the morning.
Give up	Stop trying	The problem was too difficult so I gave up.
Keep on	continuing	Keep on working until you succeed.
Log in	Sign in	Please log in to your email account.
Look after	Taking care of	He looks after his parents.
Run out	Get consumed all	The ration ran out before the war.
Run away	escape	His brother ran away when he saw your dog.
Stick to something	Continue doing something	Stick to your goal if you want to succeed.
Take off	Remove	Take off your shoes before entering the hall.
Turn up	Appear suddenly	The lion turned up in our way.
Warm-up	Prepare for work-out	It is advisable to warm up before any exercise
Run into	Meet accidentally	I ran into her mother in the market.
Pick out	Choose	I picked out the white dog for my home.
Look Out	Be watchful	Look out for the enemy in the dark.
Look Over	Examine	Look over the car before buying it.

Verb Forms in English- Click to Reading