verbn.
/vəːb/, U.S. /vərb/ 1.
a. Grammar. A word or lexical unit which is used to indicate the occurrence or performance of an action or the existence of a state or condition, and which generally forms the grammatical predicate (predicate n. 3a) of the subject, or functions as the predicate of the subject in combination with an adjunct or adjuncts.One of the traditional parts of speech: see part n.1 1c.auxiliary verb, deponent verb, modal verb, phrasal verb, etc.: see the first element.Typical characteristics: verbs in many languages have a means of showing tense, aspect, and/or modality, and often (as in English) take arguments in the form of subjects, objects, and complements.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > language > linguistics > study of grammar > a part of speech > verb > [noun]
verba1398
main verb1875
a1398 J. Trevisa tr. Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum (BL Add. 27944) (1975) I. ii. ii. 60 If þe nominatif case and þe verbe discordiþ in persone and in noumbre, þanne þe resoun is incongrue, as in þis manere: puer sumus bonus.
a1450 (a1397) Prol. Old Test. in Bible (Wycliffite, L.V.) (Cambr. Mm.2.15) (1850) xv. 57 Sumtyme it [sc. a participle] mai wel be resoluid into a verbe of the same tens.
a1504 J. Holt Lac Puerorum (1508) i. sig. A.iii There ben .viii. partes of speche. Nowne Pronowne. Uerbe. Aduerbe. Partycyple Coniunctyon. Preposicyon. and Interiectyon.
1530 J. Palsgrave Lesclarcissement Introd. p. xxx Of verbes in the frenche tong be two dyvers sortes.
1542 N. Udall tr. Erasmus Apophthegmes f. 120v The greke verbe ἐκπίπτειν souneth in latin excidere.
1625 G. Mason Grammaire Angloise 55/2 The accusatiue pronowne in the English tongue, euer followeth the verbe.
1678 R. Barclay Apol. True Christian Divinity vii. 151 This word [justifie]..doth..signify a making just, it being nothing else, but a composition of the Verb facio and the Adjective justus.
1725 I. Watts Logick i. iv. §6 There are also verbs, or words of action, which are equivocal as well as nouns or names.
1785 W. Cowper Tirocinium in Task 619 No nourishment to feed his growing mind, But conjugated verbs and nouns declin'd? View more context for this quotation
1835 T. Mitchell in tr. Aristophanes Acharnians 241 (note) The four forms of future verbs with a passive signification, which occur in Greek writers.
1864 J. Wilson Phrasis ii. xi. 324 Legach is the root or base-form of the verb.
1904 F. P. Verney & M. M. Verney Mem. Verney Family 17th Cent. (ed. 2) I. 42 The inversion of the sentences, the verb coming at the end, is curiously like the German construction.
1937 C. M. Doke in I. Schapera Bantu-speaking Tribes S. Afr. xiv. 318 Northern Sotho now divides the verbs into more strict ultimate parts.
1990 D. Ackerman Nat. Hist. Senses ii. 94 At that moment, the word ‘llama’ becomes a verb in our vocabulary, because you have to llama your way through life from time to time.
2011 Sci. Amer. (U.K. ed.) Feb. 44/1 In Mian, a language spoken in Papua New Guinea, the verb I used would reveal whether the event happened just now, yesterday or in the distant past.
b. figurative, typically connoting activeness or the performance of an action.
ΘΚΠ
the world > action or operation > manner of action > vigour or energy > [noun] > briskness or activeness > person
trotter1555
stirrer1570
verb1730
shinner1838
staver1860
heller1895
1730 H. Fielding Rape upon Rape ii. v. 22 I will be a Verb Active, and you shall be a Verb Passive.
1885 U. S. Grant Let. July in Papers (2009) XXXI. 441 The fact is I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is any thing that signafies [sic] to be, to do, or to suffer. I signify all three.
1970 R. B. Fuller et al. I seem to be Verb 1 I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process—an integral function of the universe.
2017 Lincoln (Nebraska) Jrnl. Star (Electronic ed.) 12 May Chief U.S. District Court Judge Laurie Smith Camp introduced Starita.., describing him as a ‘verb, a man of action’.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > language > linguistics > linguistic unit > word > [noun]
wordOE
diction1416
vocable1440
phrase1552
accent?1553
whid1567
vowel1578
mot1591
accenty1600
quatcha1635
verba1716
verbalism1787
word1825
word1843
dicky1893
vocabulary item1916
monolog1929
dicky bird1932
word-type1936
lexical item1964
lexon1964
a1716 R. South Serm. Several Occasions (1744) IX. 125 That so it might appear, that the assistance of the spirit promised to the church was not a vain thing, or a mere verb.
Compounds
C1. General attributive, as verb form, verb formation, verb root, verb stem, etc.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > language > linguistics > study of grammar > a part of speech > verb > [noun] > root of a verb
verb root1865
verb stem1904
1848 J. W. Donaldson Maskil Le-sopher 23 From this examination of the personal pronouns, we may now pass to the verb-forms, to which they are attached.
1859 Bibliotheca Sacra 16 700 The verb-stems are doce- and audi-.
1865 E. B. Tylor Res. Early Hist. Mankind iv. 63 The reference of substantives to a verb-root in the Aryan languages.
1884 Philol. Soc. Trans. 557 A more systematic consideration of the verb-formations.
1904 H. Bradley Making of Eng. 124 Prefixing an adverb to a verb-stem, such as ‘outbreak, outfit’.
1924 H. E. Palmer Gram. Spoken Eng. 121 The Anomalous Finites are the only verb-forms which may be shifted to front-position.
1935 T. Hudson-Williams Short Introd. Study Compar. Gram. 6 The personal endings of a verb-tense or the case-endings of a noun serve all practical purposes.
1957 Publ. Amer. Dial. Soc. xxviii. 132 If the IW [= interrogative word] appears with no accompanying verb-complement..the contrast..is suspended.
1988 Bull. School Oriental & Afr. Stud. 51 84 The normal verb conjugation [in Akkadian] in which the persons of the verb are expressed by prefixes.
2005 J. Weiner Goodnight Nobody xi. 89 Do you know..that the verb form of butler is buttle?
2014 Japanese Lang. & Lit. 48 455 The verb stem and its inflections..cannot be distinguished by the kana/kanji mixed script.
C2. Objective, with participles and verbal nouns, as verb-conjugating, verb-forming, verb-modifying, etc.
ΚΠ
1815 E. Appleton Private Educ. xii. 271 No more close study in dictionaries, no copy-writing, no verb conjugating: all is smooth and pleasant.
1862 J. M. D. Meiklejohn Easy Eng. Gram. I. 34 Write out, in columns, the Verb-modifying Words in the following sentences, and opposite them, the Verbs they modify.
1888 Amer. Anthropologist 1 291 Replacing the noun-forming prefix ka by the verb-forming prefixes, [etc.].
1923 Hispania 6 278 Verb learning should begin at the outset.
1983 Proc. Harvard Celtic Colloquium 3 47 The verb-fronting occurs in all clause types.
2005 R. Lieber in P. Štekauer & R. Lieber Handbk. Word-formation 410 English has several verb-forming suffixes: -ize and -ify are the most productive.
C3. Adverbial (chiefly instrumental), as verb-centred, verb-derived, etc., adjs.
ΚΠ
1843 Med. Times 21 Oct. 40/2 Two e's at the end of verb-formed nouns [in French] is the essential mark of the feminine gender.
1946 Language 22 160 He lists..all verb-derived noun bases (action nouns, participles, and gerunds).
1960 Amer. Jrnl. Psychotherapy 14 73 Our language is noun-oriented and we make propositions about things. Other languages are verb-oriented and make propositions about events.
1964 R. H. Robins Gen. Linguistics 331 Abaza, a Caucasian language, has been cited as an extreme case of a verb-centred language.
2014 S. Wilbers Mastering Craft of Writing 70 Note..Grover's use of the verb-inspired nouns and adjectives howl, parting, and rushing descent.
C4. Combined with other grammatical terms to form compounds used attributively with the sense ‘of or relating to the verb and what is denoted by the second element’, as verb-adverb, verb-object, etc.
ΚΠ
1904 Jrnl. Philos., Psychol. & Sci. Methods 1 527 The relations that make up the proposition—the noun-verb relation, the verb-object relation, etc.
1933 Amer. Speech 8 iv. 7/1 The verb-adverb combination make up was capable of expressing at least fourteen different meanings.
1976 Monogr. Soc. Res. Child Devel. 41 73 Tofi may have acquired a verb-patient relation similar to Zhenya's.
1988 Monatshefte 80 102 Verb-subject congruence is lacking.
2013 Nat. Lang. & Ling. Theory 31 1246 In many languages finite verb-subject or verb-object agreement derives from the grammaticalization of nominalizations marked with possessor agreement.
C5. † verb-grinder n. Obsolete slang a pedantic teacher.Cf. gerund-grinder n. at gerund n. Compounds.
verb-final adj. Linguistics designating a language in which the basic or typical word order places the verb at the end of the clause, or after both subject and object; designating word order or a clause of this kind; cf. verb-initial adj., verb-medial adj.
ΚΠ
1970 Language 46 296 In verb-final languages such as Japanese, conjunctions follow the conjuncts that they go with.
1987 Multilingua 6 321 Example (18) illustrates..verb final order in the subordinate relative clause.
2003 D. Bradley in R. J. LaPolla & G. Thurgood Sino-Tibetan Langs. xiv. 226 Like most other Tibeto-Burman languages, Lisu is verb-final.
ΚΠ
1809 B. H. Malkin tr. A. R. Le Sage Adventures Gil Blas II. v. i. 240 The verb-grinder engendered in his noddle a most ingenious device.
verb-initial adj. Linguistics designating a language in which the basic or typical word order places the verb at the beginning of the clause, or before both subject and object; designating word order or a clause of this kind; cf. verb-medial adj., verb-final adj.
ΚΠ
1970 Language 46 299 There is nothing to prevent a verb-initial language from having a V-NP inversion.
1989 Nat. Lang. & Ling. Theory 7 370 Verb-initial clauses (this means either absolute initial or preceded only by a verbal particle) constitute a minority of clauses.
2007 R. D. Borsley et al. Syntax of Welsh ix. 290 In contemporary Welsh, verb-initial orders predominate.
verb-medial adj. Linguistics designating a language in which the basic or typical word order places the verb in the middle of the clause, or between subject and object; designating word order or a clause of this kind; cf. verb-initial adj., verb-final adj.
ΚΠ
1974 Ling. Inq. 5 2 The embedded clause may be either a subject or object complement and thus, in a verb-medial system, may either precede or follow the matrix verb.
1987 E. Rafferty in R. S. Tomlin Coherence & Grounding in Disc. 362 One of the important syntactic changes [in Malay] was the shift from verb-initial to verb-medial clauses.
2015 Frontiers in Psychol. Apr. 465/2 In verb-medial languages like English, verbs become available relatively earlier in the sentence.
verb-noun n. now rare a form or derivative of a verb which in some respects functions like a noun, such as a verbal noun or gerund.
ΚΠ
1864 Museum 1 Nov. 308/2 The relative might be called the ‘conjunction-pronoun’, and the verbal substantive the ‘verb-noun’.
1872 R. P. Smith Lat. Prose Exercises i. x. 23 The subject of the verb is is composed of the verb-noun to fear acting on death an object of its own.
1912 A. S. West Rev. Eng. Gram. (1914) 70 The forms To give and Giving are equivalent to Nouns. And as they are parts of a verb, we may describe them as Verb-Nouns.
1949 Internat. Jrnl. Amer. Linguistics 15 245/2 The verb noun differs as much from an ordinary noun as does the English infinitive.
2012 Nat. Lang. & Ling. Theory 30 903 Welsh finite verbs and verb-nouns are inserted as bare forms into derivations.
verb phrase (b) a multi-word verb consisting of a verb and another element which together function as a single syntactical unit; = phrasal verb n. at phrasal adj. 1; (a) a phrase containing a verb, esp. that part of a clause or sentence which comprises the main verb together with any complements (as object, adverbial, etc.).
ΚΠ
1841 A. Allen & J. Cornwell New Eng. Gram. ii. 34 They form part of a verb-phrase, and cannot be separated from the verb.
1887 G. A. Southworth & F. B. Goddard Our Lang. ii. iv. 35 A verb-phrase is a group of words used as a single word.
1912 A. D. Sheffield Gram. & Thinking vi. 92 These classes we can then subdivide, thus... Auxiliaries, forming ‘verb phrases’ (is white, may go) [etc.].
2003 M. Morton Lover's Tongue xiv. 176 As early as 1929 the verb phrase fuck off was being used to mean run away.
2014 A. Buium Math. i. 10 The sentence..is constructed from a noun phrase (NP) ‘the father of Socrates’ followed by a verb phrase (VP) ‘is a king’.
Derivatives
ˈverb-like adj.
ΚΠ
1853 T. E. Poynting Temple of Educ. xix. 325 It must not be supposed..that in all cases when two verb-like words come together, the second is always a participle.
1935 G. K. Zipf Psycho-biol. Lang. (1936) v. 31 Not all languages make, say, noun-like and verb-like distinctions.
2011 Oceanic Linguistics 50 494 This distinction between ‘true’ prepositions and noun-like or verb-like prepositions is found in many Oceanic languages.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2018; most recently modified version published online June 2022).
verbv.
/vəːb/, U.S. /vərb/ΚΠ
1900 Salt Lake Tribune 4 Feb. 18/3 Personal notices..are, unhappily, too often verbed and adjectived by our rural contemporaries with distressing uniformity.
2. transitive. To convert (a word, esp. a noun) into a verb; = verbify v.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > language > linguistics > study of grammar > a part of speech > verb > convert into a verb [verb (transitive)]
verbalize1658
verbify1820
verb1928
1928 Canton (Texas) Herald 27 Jan. 6/3 The tendency to yank words out of one classification as a part of speech and make them do the work of other parts of speech—verbing a lot of nouns, for example.
1936 F. Clune Roaming round Darling vii. 62 The Poet accused me of verbing a noun, but I soon fixed him. I threatened to noun a verb.
1978 Verbatim Sept. 7/1 Take..the four names of the four seasons. Two have been verbed, and two have not. One summers, in Maine, and winters, perhaps, in Florida.
2010 N.Y. Times Mag. 7 Feb. 14/2 Just as medal was verbed to describe the act of winning a medal, podium could follow suit as a verb of achievement.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, September 2018; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
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n.a1398
v.1900