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What Is a Verb?

English & Language Arts · Vocabulary and Word Study · Grades 1–3

Meaning at a glance

A verb is a word that shows an action or a state of being, such as run, think or is.

Also searched as: verbs, action word, action words, doing word.

Understand it simply

Every sentence needs a verb. Verbs tell what someone or something does (jump, sing, write), thinks or feels (know, love) or is (am, is, are, was).

Verbs also show when something happens. Walk is now. Walked is the past.

See it work

Find the nouns and the verbs in this sentence:

The childrennoun singverb and clapverb in the yardnoun .

Sing and clap are verbs. They tell what the children do.

Avoid this confusion

Verbs are not always physical actions. Think, know and love are verbs. So are the “being” words: am, is, are, was and were.

Be careful with words that end in -ing. In “Swimming is fun”, swimming is acting as a noun, and is is the verb.

Try it yourself

Work these out first, then check your answers below.

  1. Find the verb: “Fatmata kicked the ball.”

  2. Which word is not a verb: jump, quickly, sing, read?

  3. Change the verb to the past: “We walk to school.”

Check your understanding

Show the answer to question 1

Answer: kicked

Kicked tells what Fatmata did.

Show the answer to question 2

Answer: quickly

Quickly tells how something is done. It is an adverb. Jump, sing and read are actions.

Show the answer to question 3

Answer: We walked to school.

Add -ed to walk to show it happened before now.

Understand more with Courseversity

You now know what verb means. Keep going with a full lesson, then explore the ideas that connect to it.

Learn

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Practise

Practise with Learning Lab questions for the lesson Action words (Grade 1), with an explanation after each answer.

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Explore

Ideas that connect to this word.

  • Noun: the naming word that usually does the action.
  • Adverb: a word that tells more about a verb.

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Sources and review

This explanation was written from Courseversity lesson content (see the lessons above). An outside reference check is still on the editorial to-do list.

Written by: Courseversity editorial team (AI-assisted draft).

Review status: checked against the sources above. Educator review is pending, so please tell us if anything looks wrong.

Last updated: 27 October 2026.

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