Verb

How to spell verb

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce verb

What does verb mean?

1. nounA word that expresses an action, occurrence, or state of being.

Verb in a sentence

• The teacher asked the class to underline every verb in the paragraph.

• The word runs in that clause functions as a verb.

Where does verb come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word comes from the Latin verbum, which simply meant 'word'. In Latin grammar the verbum was singled out as the most important kind of word in a sentence, the part that expresses an action or state, and so the general sense of 'word' narrowed into the technical grammatical term. English took it up in the late 1300s by way of Old French verbe, already carrying the grammatical meaning we use today. The same Latin verbum lies behind 'verbal', 'verbose', 'proverb', and the legal phrase 'verbatim', which means word for word. Because the spelling stayed so close to its short Latin root, verb is one of the rare grammar terms with no silent letters or doubled consonants to trip up the writer.

How the word is built

• verb (from Latin verbum: word)