What Are Verbs?

The verb is king in English! You can make a sentence with a single verb. You cannot make a sentence without a verb.

Verbs are sometimes described as "action words". This is partly true. Many verbs give the idea of action, of "doing" something. For example, words like run, fight, do and work all convey action.
But some verbs do not give the idea of action; they give the idea of existence, of state, of "being". For example, words like be, exist, seem and belong all convey state.

A verb always has a subject. (In the sentence "John speaks English", John is the subject and speaks is the verb.) In simple terms, therefore, we can say that verbs are words that tell us what a subject does or is; they describe:

action (Ram speaks English)

state (Ram is English)

There is something very special about verbs in English. Most other words (adjectives, adverbs, prepositions etc) do not change in form (although nouns can have singular and plural forms). But almost all verbs change in form. For example, the verb to work has five forms:

to work, work, works, worked, working

We divide verbs into two broad classifications:

Main Verbs(also called "Lexical Verbs")These are verbs that really mean something, they tell us something. For example, love, make, work are main verbs.

Auxiliary Verbs(also called "Helping Verbs")These are verbs that have no real meaning. They are necessary for the grammatical structure of the sentence, but they do not tell us very much alone. For example, will, would, may are auxiliary verbs. We usually use auxiliary verb with main verbs. They "help" the main verb.