verbo

Verbo is a term used in several languages to designate the word class that encodes actions, events, or states. In Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French the equivalent term is verbo or verbe; in English, the corresponding term is verb. The concept is a central element of grammar and syntax.

Etymology and cognates: The word derives from Latin verbum, meaning “word.” Its Romance-language cognates include Spanish verbo, Portuguese verbo, Italian verbo, and French verbe, all sharing a common origin and reflecting the historical link to the broader term “word.”

Morphology and forms: Verbs are typically inflected for tense, aspect, mood, voice, person, and number. They can be regular or irregular and produce non-finite forms such as infinitives, participles, and gerunds. Many languages require subject-verb agreement.

Syntax and usage: Verbs serve as the predicate of a clause and may combine with auxiliary verbs to express compound tenses or modality. They interact with other parts of speech, govern argument structure, and can appear in finite or non-finite forms depending on the language.

Examples: Spanish “hablar” means to speak and yields present forms such as hablo, hablas, habla; Portuguese “falar” yields falo, falas, fala; Italian “parlare” yields parlo, parli, parla. These illustrate how verbs carry tense, person, and number through inflection in many languages.