Verbs

What do verbs do?

People sometimes call verbs "doing words", but that's only partly true.

Verbs can describe two main things:

#. Actions / physical processes (called dynamic verbs)

#. States / feelings / situations (called stative verbs)

Example

“Grandpa is strolling around the park. (Action - dynamic)

“He’s relaxing”. (Calmer process, but still sort of active or ‘dynamic’)

“Grandpa feels content”. (Not really doing anything, just experiencing a state. Stative)

The best way to recognise a verb

Look for the ‘tense change’ test. Only true verbs can usually change from present to past!

- stroll - strolled

- relax - relaxed

- feel - felt

- park (as in "to park a car") - parked

If a word can do this present/past switch, it's almost certainly a verb.

Nouns vs verbs — same word, different job

Many words can be both a noun and a verb depending on how they're used.

Example

Noun: the park (a place)

Verb: she’s parking the car / she parked the car

Lexical verbs vs auxiliary verbs

Most verbs are lexical verbs (also called main verbs or full verbs). These are the ones that carry the real meaning — they tell us what is happening or what state someone/something is in.

Examples of lexical verbs

stroll, relax, feel, finish, borrow, lose, eat, think, love, seem

There is also a small special group called auxiliary verbs (helping verbs – remember the previous post on ‘to be, ‘to have’ and ‘to do‘). The most common ones are:

- be, have, do

- can, could, will, would, shall, should, must, may, might

Auxiliaries don't tell us the main action — they help the lexical verb by adding extra information (like tense, completion, possibility, etc.).

Example

- Ian has finished the book. → has = auxiliary (shows the action is completed + still relevant now) → finished = lexical verb (tells us exactly what happened)

- I can borrow it. → can = auxiliary (adds the idea of ability/permission) → borrow = lexical verb (the real action)

To summarise

Lexical verbs

These are the ‘meaning-carrying’ verbs (the Kpop stars of the sentence)

Auxiliary verbs

These are the little helpers that work together with them (the backup singers).

And don’t forget…

When people just say ‘verb’ in everyday talk, they usually mean lexical verbs (main verbs). We only need to use the term ‘lexical verb’ when we're specifically comparing them to auxiliaries.