What are verbs?

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Grammar Trove

3 min readFeb 9, 2023

A quick intro with classifications, descriptions, and examples.

In this blog, I will briefly introduce verbs and how they can be used in sentences. Let’s get started!

A verb is an important element of the eight basic parts of speech.

Verbs denote:

There are various ways that verbs are used. Let’s check them out!

Dynamic/Action Verbs vs. Stative Verbs

Verbs can be categorized into two classes based on whether it represents an action or a state:

Dynamic/action verbs: These indicate a physical action. Dynamic verbs can be subdivided into two sub-categories based on whether the corresponding actions performed physically or mentally.
Stative verbs: These indicate a certain state.

Verbs can be classified into the following two classes based on how they express meaning:

Helping/auxiliary verbs: These help another verb express its tense, mood, or voice.
Phrasal verbs: These are composed of a verb and an adverb or a preposition.

There is a classification of verbs based on the way they are used with direct objects and indirect objects:

Transitive verbs: These represent actions that always express doable activities that generally relate or affect direct objects and occasionally indirect objects.
Intransitive verbs: These represent actions that always express doable activities but are NOT related to direct objects or indirect objects.
Ditransitive verbs: These represent actions that are related to direct objects as well as optionally indirect objects.
Ambitransitive verbs: These represent actions that sometimes act as transitive and other times intransitive.

Verbs can be classified into two groups based on whether a certain pattern can be followed for different tenses and past participle:

Regular verbs: These follow certain patterns for verb tenses and past participle.
Irregular verbs: These do NOT follow certain patterns for verb tenses and past participle.

I hope you got an overall idea of verbs! For more information, please see: