Verb

A verb is a word class that denotes an action, event, or state and typically functions as the predicate in a clause. Verbs encode information about time and modality and can express ongoing processes, completed actions, or states of being. They are often inflected for agreement with the subject, and for tense, aspect, mood, voice, and sometimes number and person, depending on the language.

Verb forms include finite forms that mark tense and agreement and non-finite forms such as infinitives, participles, and gerunds. Many languages employ auxiliary verbs or particles to express complex tense, aspect, negation, mood, or voice. Verbs also show transitivity: intransitive verbs require no direct object (sleep), transitive verbs take a direct object (eat an apple), and ditransitive verbs take two objects (give a book to Mary). Voice contrasts, such as active and passive, reframe the relationship between the verb and its arguments.

Cross-linguistic variation is common. Some languages rely heavily on inflectional suffixes to encode verb information (Latin, Russian), while others use analytic constructions with separate words (English, Chinese). Irregular verbs exist in many languages, and the study of verbs intersects with syntax, morphology, and semantics. Verbs participate in verbal phrases and are often complemented by auxiliary verbs to form complex predicates.