Pronunciation Noun
verb (plural verbs)
- (grammar) A word that indicates an action, event, or state.
- The word “speak” is an English verb.
- (obsolete) Any word; a vocable.
- (figurative) An action as opposed to a trait or thing.
- Kindness is a verb, not an adjective. You're only kind if you do kind things.
- (programming) A named command that performs a specific operation on an object.
- 1995, Adam Denning, OLE Controls Inside Out (page 321)
- You can invoke the Properties OLE verb in many ways. The easiest way is to move the mouse over the border of the control until it becomes only a four-way pointer and then right-click.
- 1995, Adam Denning, OLE Controls Inside Out (page 321)
- French: verbe
- German: Verb, Verbum, Zeitwort, Tätigkeitswort, Wandelwort, Tuwort/Tunwort, Aussagewort
- Italian: verbo
- Portuguese: verbo
- Russian: глаго́л
- Spanish: verbo
verb (verbs, present participle verbing; past and past participle verbed)
- (transitive, nonstandard, colloquial) To use any word that is not, or had not been a verb (especially a noun) as if it were a verb.
- a. 1981 Feb 22, unknown Guardian editor as quoted by William Safire, On Language, in New York Times, pSM3
- Haig, in congressional hearings before his confirmatory, paradoxed his auditioners by abnormalling his responds so that verbs were nouned, nouns verbed and adjectives adverbised. He techniqued a new way to vocabulary his thoughts so as to informationally uncertain anybody listening about what he had actually implicationed... .
- 1993 January 25, Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson
- I like to verb words.... I take nouns and adjectives and use them as verbs. Remember when "access" was a thing? Now it's something you DO. It got verbed. Verbing weirds language.
- 1997, David. F. Griffiths, Desmond J. Higham, learning LATEX, p8
- Nouns should never be verbed.
- 2005 Oct 5, Jeffrey Mattison, Letters, in The Christian Science Monitor, p8
- In English, verbing nouns is okay
- a. 1981 Feb 22, unknown Guardian editor as quoted by William Safire, On Language, in New York Times, pSM3
- (used as a neutral, unspecific verb, often in linguistics and the social sciences) To perform any action that is normally expressed by a verb.
- 1946: Rand Corporation, The Rand Paper Series
- For example, one-part versions of the proposition "The doctor pursued the lawyer" were "The doctor verbed the object," ...
- 1964: Journal of Mathematical Psychology
- Each sentence had the same basic structure: The subject transitive verbed the object who intransitive verbed in the location.
- 1998: Marilyn A. Walker, Aravind Krishna Joshi, Centering Theory in Discourse
- The sentence frame was Dan verbed Ben approaching the store. This sentence frame was followed in all cases by He went inside.
- 1946: Rand Corporation, The Rand Paper Series
Conjugation of verb
infinitive | (to) verb | ||
---|---|---|---|
present tense | past tense | ||
1st-person singular | verb | verbed | |
2nd-person singular | * verb, verbest* | verbed, verbedst* | |
3rd-person singular | verbs, verbeth* | verbed#English|verbed | |
plural | verb | ||
subjunctive | verb | ||
imperative | verb | — | |
participle> participles | verbing | verbed | |
* Archaic or obsolete. |
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