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Verb   Listen
noun
Verb  n.  
1.
A word; a vocable. (Obs.)
2.
(Gram.) A word which affirms or predicates something of some person or thing; a part of speech expressing being, action, or the suffering of action. Note: A verb is a word whereby the chief action of the mind (the assertion or the denial of a proposition) finds expression.
Active verb, Auxiliary verb, Neuter verb, etc. See Active, Auxiliary, Neuter, etc.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Verb" Quotes from Famous Books



... Scripture, races, and operas, cards, charades, and whatever else amuses society without perceptibly sanctifying it. All these, by Julia's account, Miss Hardie had renounced, and was now denouncing (with the young the latter verb treads on the very heels of the former). "And, you know, she is a ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... acquisition of new ideas is reflected in language by an increase of words. But an examination of words in common use will show that they are nearly all the names of concepts. Proper names are the principal exception. Every common noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and preposition is the name of a concept; for example, horse, beauty, to steal, running, over, early, yellow, grape, ocean, etc. To understand these concepts there must be somewhere a progress from the individual to the abstract, ...
— The Elements of General Method - Based on the Principles of Herbart • Charles A. McMurry

... apostles—governments—God hath set, put, made, constituted, &c., (as the word imports,) in the Church. What hath God set in the Church? viz. apostles and—governments, as well as apostles themselves. The verb, hath set, equally relates to all the sorts of officers enumerated. And is not that officer IA the Church of divine right, which God himself, by his own act and authority, sets therein? Then doubtless these ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... group leaves the room while the others decide upon a verb. The group which left the room is then called back and tries to guess the verb from the clues which are given by those who determined the verb. These clues are given in the form of sentences containing ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper

... Addobbati, or di Corredo, probably because the expense of costly furniture was borne by them—addobbo having become a name for decorative trappings, and Corredo for equipment. The latter is still in use for a bride's trousseau. The former has the same Teutonic root as our verb 'to dub.' But the Italians recognised three other kinds of knights, the Cavalieri Bagnati, Cavalieri di Scudo, and Cavalieri d'Arme. Of the four sorts Sacchetti writes in one of his novels:—'Knights ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... quite as often in the selection of the apt word as in the construction of elaborate phrases with a half-humorous intention. A cowboy once told me of the arrival of a tramp by saying, "He SIFTED into camp." Could any verb be more expressive? Does not it convey exactly the lazy, careless, out-at-heels shuffling gait of the hobo? Another in the course of description told of a saloon scene, "They all BELLIED UP TO the bar." Again, a range cook, objecting to purposeless ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White

... committing any part of it to paper, balancing and reshaping until it fully satisfied his sense of unity and rhythm. Something of formality and ponderousness quickly becomes evident in his style, together with a rather mannered use of potential instead of direct indicative verb forms; how his style compares with Johnson's and how far it should be called pseudo-classical, are interesting questions to consider. One appreciative description of it may be quoted: 'The language of Gibbon never flags; he walks forever as to the clash of arms, under an ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher

... would be only in certain companies or in writing in the newspapers anonymously. Strange! there was hardly any insinuation against this coinage which they would not tolerate and even applaud in their daily papers; and yet, if the same thing were said without ambiguity to their faces—nominative case verb and accusative being all in their right places, and doubt impossible—they would consider themselves very seriously and justly outraged, and accuse the speaker of ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... stupider than I dare suppose anyone here to be, if you cannot invent for yourselves all the intermediate stages of the transformation, however startling. And, indeed, if modern philosophers had stuck more closely to this old proverb, and its defining verb "make," and tried to show how some person or persons—let them be who they may—men, angels, or gods—made the sow's ear into the silk purse, and the savage into the sage—they might have pleaded that they ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... up anybody, he does not announce his identity, taking it for granted that the tones of his voice are sufficiently well known to reveal it. It has been noted, moreover, that he commences all his conversations over the wire with the pronoun "I," while the verb "command," either in the past or in the present tense, almost invariably follows. This is quite sufficient ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... to show that rack "is merely the past tense, and therefore past participle, [reac] or [rec], of the Anglo-Saxon verb Recan, exhalare, to reek;" and although the advocates of its being a particular description of light cloud refer to him as an authority for their reading, he treats it throughout generally as "a vapour, a steam, or an exhalation." But Horne Tooke, in his zeal as an etymologist, forgot altogether ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various

... bearing, offspring, fruit; bearing, dropping, hatching,—of animals, plants, etc.; fruit, produce, offspring, progeny, brood." The immediate derivation of the word is feto, "I breed," whence also effetus, "having brought forth young, worn out by bearing, effete." Feto itself is from an old verb feuere, "to generate, to produce," possibly related to fui and our be. The radical signification of foetus then is "that which is bred, or brought to be"; and from the same root fe are derived feles, "cat" (the fruitful animal); fe-num, "hay"; fe-cundus, "fertile"; ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain

... languages give for such a pure concept as I am? They may say, I stand, or I live, or I grow, or I turn, but it is given to few languages only to be able to say I am. To us nothing seems more natural than the auxiliary verb I am; but, in reality, no work of art has required greater efforts than this little word I am. And all those efforts lie beneath the level of the common Proto-Aryan speech. Many different ways were open, were tried, ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller

... the consideration of the Verb and Participle, related to Movement. The Great Noun Class of Words, including the Nominative Noun Substantive, not yet brought into action and made to functionate as Subject or Agent, together with the whole Adjective Family of Words as above defined, is without Action. These words, and correspondentially, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... was in commending of folly. Neither shall any man or matter escape some touch of these smiling railers. But for Erasmus and Agrippa, they had another foundation than the superficial part would promise. Marry, these other pleasant fault-finders, who will correct the verb, before they understand the noun, and confute others' knowledge before they confirm their own: I would have them only remember, that scoffing cometh not of wisdom. So as the best title in true English ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... of beets is made in this formula; therefore, it may belong to the foregoing leek recipes. V. This is not so. Here the noun is made subject to the first verb, as is practiced frequently. Moreover, the mode of preparation fits beets nicely, except for the flour to which we object in note 3, below. To cook beets with leeks, spices and wine and serve them (cold) with oil and vinegar is indeed a ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... scenes take place, and of the most material qualification that is derived from the whole ceremony, that of throwing the spear. I conceive this to be the import of the word erah-ba-diahng, erah being a part of the verb to throw, erah, ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins

... if only they did not contradict one another flat. We are doubling the electorate: what result will the General Election produce? Politicians who belong to the family of Mr. Despondency and his daughter, Muchafraid, reply that Monarchy will be abolished, Capital "conscripted" (delightful verb), debt repudiated, and Anarchy enthroned. Strangely dissimilar results are predicted by the Party-hacks, who, being by lifelong habit trained to applaud whatever Government does, announce with smug satisfaction that the British workman loves property, and will use his ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... impregnated with meaning, in order to expunge those that are insignificant. When we consult Dr. JOHNSON'S Dictionary, we find that the greater part of the words enumerated in his ample collection, instead of being senseless, enjoy an exuberance of meaning. Thus the verb to think has ten significations; the substantive Thought (the preterite of the verb), 12; Something, n. s., 5; Nothing, n. s., 11; Smooth, adj., 6; Rough, adj., 12; To stand, v. n., 69; To run, v. n., ...
— On the Nature of Thought - or, The act of thinking and its connexion with a perspicuous sentence • John Haslam

... moisture, and braced the relaxed nerves. He told me it was utterly unknown to the ancients; and derived its name from an Arabian word, which I might easily perceive by the sound and termination. From this topic he transferred his disquisitions to the verb drink, which he affirmed was improperly applied to the taking of coffee, inasmuch as people did not drink, but sip or sipple that liquor; that the genuine meaning of drinking is to quench one's thirst, or commit a debauch by swallowing wine; that the Latin word, which conveyed ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett

... for scientific knowledge; he might spend all his spare moments making crude experiments with an air-pump, or gazing at planets through a cheap astronomical telescope; he might fail dismally to grasp the rudiments of the Latin grammar, and be incapable of conjugating an irregular verb; but his nose would be kept down to the grindstone of the school curriculum all the same, and not the smallest attention paid to his ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... smooth-running pump. This I admit I could never manage to produce. Mr. Curtis's standard of style was solely governed by the question of the repetition of the same word. It was an unforgivable sin to repeat a substantive, adjective, or verb without an intervening space of at least four inches. This, of course, leads to that particular form of "journalese" in which a cricket-ball becomes a "leathern missile" and so forth. Apropos of this I remember a good Fleet Street story. An Editor, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... see how quickly his mind grasped the association of a verb with some name, and the simplest and most common verbs of action were taught. In this way it became apparent that all should be cautious about talking of the proposed expedition in his presence. Nevertheless all were anxious to enlist him in ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay

... model an adverbial phrase, an adverb, a noun used adverbially, a noun in apposition, a clause modifying a verb, a participle modifying the subject of a verb, a non-restrictive clause, and a clause used as ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... bandy back and forth such an expression as—ahem—'chewing-gum common.' To the eye, such an expression printed in the financial columns would seem—would—in short, hence chickle, Miss Appleby, noun and verb. Never anything else at Arkansopolis. Will you not chickle now? No? Ah, well. But at least you are with us in the Higher Spelling." His hand sought the window-sill, and then his mouth; and his jaws resumed their ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister

... verbs, as participials or verbal nouns, denoting a place where the action of the verb is performed. To this class belong, for example, such names as Mushauwomuk (Boston), 'where there is going-by-boat,' i.e., a ferry, or canoe-crossing. Most of these names, however, may be shown by rigid analysis to belong to ...
— The Composition of Indian Geographical Names - Illustrated from the Algonkin Languages • J. Hammond Trumbull

... yields to the weaker, from courtesy and compassion. However, to proceed. We have both conjugated amo before we ever saw each other, so that our recurrence to the good old verb seemed somewhat like a Saturday's repetition. As for doceo, we have been both engaged in enforcing it, and successfully, Martha"—here he shook his purse—"during the best portion of our lives; for which we have made ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... superior numbers, it was dragged or drawn out. The badger was then set free and permitted to return to its tub until it recovered from the effects of the struggle, after which it was again baited. It had to submit to this barbarous treatment several times a day. The verb "to badger," now often applied to persons, was originally used in direct ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... All generations of women having been bred under the shadow of intellectual contempt, they have of course done much to justify it. They have often used only for frivolous purposes even the poor opportunities allowed them. They have employed the alphabet, as Moliere said, chiefly in spelling the verb Amo. Their use of science has been like that of Mlle. de Launay, who computed the decline in her lover's affection by his abbreviation of their evening walk in the public square, preferring to cross it rather ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various

... "the survival of the fittest." This, however, had not occurred to me till reading your letter. It is, however, a great objection to this term that it cannot be used as a substantive governing a verb; and that this is a real objection I infer from H. Spencer continually using the words Natural Selection. I formerly thought, probably in an exaggerated degree, that it was a great advantage to bring into ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... the former have the reputation of being very clever, while those of the latter are proverbially as stupid. (And for the proper understanding of the jest it should perhaps be explained that the Arabic verb hama means to "protect" or "defend," the verb hamasa to "roast" or "toast.") These men had some business of importance with the nearest magistrate, and set out together on their journey. The man of Hums, conscious of his own ignorance, begged ...
— The Book of Noodles - Stories Of Simpletons; Or, Fools And Their Follies • W. A. Clouston

... root gilid signifies in Tagal, "margin," "strand," or "shore." The reduplication of the first syllable, if tonic, signifies active future action. If not tonic and the suffix an be added, it denotes the place where the action of the verb is frequently executed. The preposition sa indicates place, time, reference. The atonic reduplication may also signify plurality, in which case the singular noun would be sagilid, i.e., "at the margin," or "the last"—that is, the slave. ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga

... have picked it up and employ it in their dealings with the Coast tribes and travelling traders. It is by no means an easy language to pick up—it is not a farrago of bad words and broken phrases, but is a definite structure, has a great peculiarity in its verb forms, and employs no genders. There is no grammar of it out yet; and one of the best ways of learning it is to listen to a seasoned second mate regulating the unloading or loading, of cargo, over ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... to do this is not, as might at first appear, in the nature of things impossible, but the further question suggests itself, Can it be done to order? Has the verb to love really an imperative mood? Certainly, to say that we can love at pleasure, and by a mere effort of will summon up a passion which does not arise of itself, is to take up a paradoxical and novel position. ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... the use of words in the wrong parts of speech, as a noun for a verb, or an adjective for an adverb. Sometimes newspapers are guilty of such faults; for journalistic English, though pithy, shows here and there traces of its rapid composition. You must look to more leisurely authorities. The speakers and writers on whom you may rely will not say "to burglarize," ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... cosmogonies. And if they had, would it not be more strange for Moses to leave it out on that account? It would be well to remind you just here that the Almighty, and doubtless his man Moses also, knew that men possessed at least common sense. In the New Testament we have the word tartarus in its verb form. Where did it come from? The Apostle Peter, guided by the divine spirit, found it in Grecian mythology. Is it to be thrown out on that account? Nay, verily. A man of God, that is, a prophet, in any of the ancient ages as far back ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880

... Greeks: so in Kor. xxx. 1. "Alif Lam Mim, the Greeks (Al-Roum) have been defeated." Mr. Rodwell curiously remarks that "the vowel-points for 'defeated' not being originally written, would make the prophecy true in either event, according as the verb received an active or passive sense in pronunciation." But in discovering this mare's nest, a rank piece of humbug like Aio te Aeacida, etc., he forgets that all the Prophet's "Companions," numbering some 5000, would pronounce it only ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... an enclitic object pronoun may be appended to the verb when it stands at the head of a sentence or phrase, and, less ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos

... suffixes seem to be commonly used by the Bontoc Igorot in verbal formations. The tense of a verb standing alone seems always indefinite; the context alone tells whether the present, past, or future ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... need be no scruple in treating this "path" as a mere misprint or mis-script for "put." In what place does Shakespeare—where does any other writer of the same age—use "path" as a verb ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge

... The dative? Pretty i' the Mantuan!)—Anglice Off in three flea skips. Hactenus, so far, So good, tam bene. Bene, satis, male -, Where was I with my trope 'bout one in a quag? I did once hitch the syntax into verse: Verbum personale, a verb personal, Concordat—ay, "agrees," old Fatchaps—cum Nominativo, with its nominative, Genere, i' point o' gender, numero, O' number, et persona, and person. Ut, Instance: Sol ruit, down flops sun, et and, Montes umbrantur, out flounce mountains. ...
— Fly Leaves • C. S. Calverley

... problem of interpreting the grammatical value of the word driving in the sentence, "The boy driving the horse is very noisy," he is compelled to apply to its interpretation the ideas noun, adjectival relation, and adjective, and also the ideas object, objective relation, and verb. In this way the child secures the mental elements which he may organize into the new experience, or knowledge (participle), and thus gain control of the ...
— Ontario Normal School Manuals: Science of Education • Ontario Ministry of Education

... could n't, and that's the reason I told you to take your seat, and left him in the corner. Remember that you are a stranger in the place, and they take more notice of what you do, so you must be careful. Now let's have our conjugations. Give me the verb 'to be,' potential mood, ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... sciences; but we doubt whether in any department of physical science the manuals in use seventy-five years ago are so utterly inferior to those of the present day as are, for instance, the remarks of Viger, and his commentators before Hermann, on the syntax of the Greek verb, to the philosophical treatment of the same ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... "so named by Faraday from the Greek verb, io, to go. They are little positive and negative charges of electricity of which molecules are composed. You know some believe now that matter is really composed of electrical energy. I think I can explain it best by a simile I use with my classes. It is as though you had ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve

... receiving,' and it ought to correspond to the Roman Peculatus. But [Greek: dorodokia] also means corruption by bribes. Bribery is [Greek: dekasmos] in Plutarch, which is expressed generally by the Roman Ambitus, and specially by the verb 'decuriare.' (See Cicero's Oration Pro Cn. Plancio, Ed. Wunder.) The offence of Scipio was Ambitus. (Dion Cassius, 40. c. 51, &c.; Appianus, Civil Wars, ii. 24.) As to Roman Bribery, see the article BRIBERY, 'Political Dictionary,' ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch

... Here, as after their ablutions they sat down to the evening meal, the archbishop remembered poor Marmaduke, and despatched to him one of his thirty household chaplains. Marmaduke was found fast asleep over the second tense of the verb amo. ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... the Spanish than of the French tragedy, although it does not demand that the parody shall be so very strict, as to re-echo noun for noun, or verb for verb, which Lord Holland gives us as a law of the age of Lope de Vega.[2] The English heroic poet did enough if he displayed sufficient point in the dialogue, and alertness in adopting and retorting the image presented by the preceding speech; though, if he could ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... what these visits were to her. "Do you think I should take the trouble to investigate his motives? Don't you know, Nan," in her sweet whimsical voice, "that the masculine mind loves to conjugate the verb 'to amuse'? Mr. Drummond is evidently bored by his own company; but there! the vagaries of men are innumerable. One might as well question the ebbing tide as inquire of these young divinities the reason of all their eccentric actions. He ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... 'Tramp Abroad'" he replied, "We know what we are and how we look, and the fanciful picture presented to our eyes gives us only food for laughter, not cause for resentment. The jokes he made on our long words, our inverted sentences, and the position of the verb have really led to a reform in style which will end in making our language as compact and crisp as the French or English. I regard Mark Twain as the foremost ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... are cases where the subject is qualified rather than the verb, as with verbs of incomplete predication, 'being,' 'seeming,' 'arriving,' etc. In 'the matter seems clear,' 'clear' is part of the predicate of 'matter.' 'They arrived safe': 'safe' does not qualify 'arrived,' but goes with it to complete the predicate. So, 'he sat silent,' ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... human habitations in this way, as the redbreast does, Mr. Masson replies that the subject of the verb "to come" is, not the skylark, but L'Allegro, the joyous student. I cannot construe the lines as Mr. Masson does, even though the consequence were to convict Milton, a city-bred youth, of not knowing a skylark from a sparrow ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... on referring to Kilian's Dictionarium Teutonico-Latino-Gallicum, that the word Kavel is used for sors, "sors in divisione bonorum:" and among other definitions of the verb Kavelen, "sorte dividere terram," which corresponds exactly with his ...
— Notes & Queries No. 29, Saturday, May 18, 1850 • Various

... the shrug. The shrug requires special attention. The shrug is a gesture used by the Latin race for expressing a multitude of things, both objectively and subjectively. It is a language of itself. It is, as circumstances require, a noun, adverb, pronoun, verb, adjective, preposition, interjection, conjunction. Yet it does not supersede the spoken language. It comes in rather when spoken words are useless, to convey intensity of meaning or delicacy. It is not taught, ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille

... The verb dare here used is quite a distinct word from dare to venture to do. It means to daze or render helpless with the sight of something. To dare larks is to fascinate or daze them in order to catch them. The "dare" is ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory

... the first series of propositions the word 'is' is really the copula; in the second, the verb of existence. As in the first series, the negative consequence followed from one being affirmed to be equivalent to the not many; so here the affirmative consequence is deduced from one ...
— Parmenides • Plato

... interfere as little as may be with native ways, trusting to time, peace, and the missionaries to secure the gradual civilization of the people. Once a year the Commissioner meets the whole people, in their national assembly called the Pitso,—the name is derived from their verb "to call" (cf. [Greek: ekklesia])—which in several points recalls the agora, or assembly of freemen described in the Homeric poems. The Paramount Chief presides, and debate is mainly conducted by the chiefs; but all freemen, gentle ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce

... old Japanese beliefs in the magical efficacy of a certain mental operation implied, though not described, by the verb nazoraeru. The word itself cannot be adequately rendered by any English word; for it is used in relation to many kinds of mimetic magic, as well as in relation to the performance of many religious acts of faith. ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn

... generally understood that by the word "Lord," Hegesippus intended some writing or writings, containing the teaching of Christ; in which sense alone the term combines with the other term "Law and Prophets," which denote writings; and together with them admit of the verb "teacheth" in the present tense. Then, that these writings were some or all of the books of the New Testament, is rendered probable from hence, that in the fragments of his works, which are preserved in Eusebius, and in a writer of the ninth century, enough, though it ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley

... color of the ground; it is not so much pretty as the French Poilus who are the color of the sky. And his hat is tied, like a bonnet of old woman, with a shoe-lace in the back. But I love him all of same. He take me on his knees and say: "Parlez vous francais" and he begin to recite the verb "avoir," because he know nothing more of French. And so I say I know very well the American and I talk at him and he laugh very strong. And he give me a piece of bonbon very droll. It is mint but it is like elastic; I eat a great number of pieces because I want not to offence him, ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell

... of the many cases in which the Revised Version, by accuracy of rendering the tense of a verb, gives a much more striking as well as correct reproduction of the original than the Authorised Version does. The former reads 'going out,' instead of 'gone out,' a rendering which the Old Version has, unfortunately, relegated to the margin. It is clearly to be preferred, not only ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren

... of Dr. Prichard, on the Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations. "First," says Dr. Wiseman, "he has examined the lexical resemblances, and shewn that the primary and most simple words are the same in both, as well as the numerals and elementary verbal roots. Then follows a minute analysis of the verb, directed to shew its analogies with other languages, and they are such as manifest no casual coincidence, but an internal structure radically the same. The verb substantive, which is minutely analysed, presents ...
— Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation • Robert Chambers

... went to their lecture-rooms with bowed heads, the morning papers shaking in their hands. The accuracy of the Hebrew verb did not matter so much as it did last term. The homiletic uses or abuses of an applied text, the soundness of the new school doctrine of free will, seemed less important to the universe than they were before the Flag went ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various

... who, according to Merrill, had the Parisinus at his disposal, has corrected two obvious misprints, made an inevitable change in the tense of a verb—with or without the help of the ancient book—and introduced from that book one unfortunate reading which we find in ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand

... shall we say when these humourists forbid us to say nosse and judicasse for novisse and judicavisse; as if we did not know, as well as themselves, that, in these instances, the verb at full length is most agreeable to the laws of grammar, though custom has given the preference to the contracted verb? Terence, therefore, has made use of both, as when he says, eho tu cognatum ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... applied to birds, is synonymous to the verb to sing: thus in "The Spanish Tragedy," ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... lonesomeness; and then we came trooping back at the sound of the bell, untamed, happy little savages, ready to settle, with a long breath, to the afternoon's drowsy routine. Arrant nonsense that! the boundary of British America and the conjugation of the verb to be! Who that might loll away the hours upon a bank in silken ease, needed aught even of computation or the tongues? He ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... deed, and one sovereign delegate, who could not stand by (ne peut etre present), but the substitute of which wisely and prudently abstained from the vote at the first turn (au premier scrutin) and threw a blank ticket at the second, expound (verb governed by protesters) the acts and situation thence disastrously resulting for our ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... equations which Agatha was diligently working out; but Vera, though refusing to take refuge from the piano, to which, in fact, she was perfectly inured, worried her elder as much as she durst, by inquiries after the meaning of words, or what horrid verb to look out in the dictionary; and it was a pleasing change when Paula proceeded to work the same scene out for herself without having recourse to explanations, so that Agatha was undisturbed except by the careless notes, which almost equally worried ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... of hen's eggs that I understood his meaning. My word, as an exclamation with a thousand significances, could have arrived from nowhere else than Old England. A paddle, a sweep, or an oar, is called washee, and washee is also the verb. ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London

... here referred to is held by some of the Mmmsakas. The imperative forms of the verb have their primary meaning, i.e. the power of originating action, only in Vedic sentences which enjoin the performance of certain actions for the bringing about of certain ends: no other means of knowledge but the Veda informing us that such ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Ramanuja - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 48 • Trans. George Thibaut

... statement; chastened where necessary, but not defaced by an imitation, even of a self-erected, yet artificial, standard. It does not do to meddle too much with yourself. But I do resort to a weeding process in revising; a verb or an adjective, an expletive or a superlative, is dragged out and cast away. Even so, as often as not, I have to add. The words above, "as far as I can see it," have just been put in. Of course, in the interest of readers, I resort to breaking up sentences; but to me personally ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... of things we would speak: adieu, in the verbs, to all which might explain the active person, how and in what time it acts, if it acts alone or with others: in a word, with the Chinese, the same word is substantive, adjective, verb, singular, plural, masculine, feminine, &c. It is the person who hears who must arrange the circumstances, and guess them. Add to all this, that all the words of this language are reduced to three hundred and a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... The verb Kheper usually translated "to be," "to exist," "to become," also has the meaning of "to roll" or "revolve." The sun apparently rolled or revolved around the earth. In the British Museum, in a hieratic papyrus ...
— Scarabs • Isaac Myer

... unseen, but heard. And all the other girls in the room, in fear and trembling, would begin to move their lips in a perfect whirlwind of study, or write violently on their slates, or begin at that very instant to rule off their copy-books for the next day's verb. ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King

... first of our public speakers to introduce this improvement which has since found its way into the court-room and the theatre. His manner was direct, terse and earnest, with an habitual pause or hesitation to select just the right verb or adjective that would convey the idea he wished to express. His delivery was suited to his thought. His hearers were not commonly pleased with it at first, but if they continued to listen most of them came ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... of a considerable portion of life—is not without its ideal, its hero, its highest expression, its consummate flower. It is expressed in a word which I use without any sense of its personality, as the French use the word Barnum—for our crude young nation has the distinction of adding a verb to the French language, the verb to barnum—it is expressed in the well-known name Croesus. This is a standard—impossible to be reached perhaps, but a standard. If one may say so, the country is sown with ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... this state descends that profound expression of the soul in Milton, (GOD make us thankful for him!) when he intends the verb that he escapes in the passage that adorns my Essay, should be supplied by a pulsation ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various

... the same grammatical construction. In more than one respect the polyglot American is antipodal to the Chinese. The language of the former is richest in words, that of the latter the poorest. The preposition follows the noun, and the verb ends the sentence. Ancient Tupi is the basis of the Lingoa Geral, the inter-tribal tongue on the Middle Amazon. The semi-civilized Ticunas, Mundurucus, etc., have one costume—the men in trowsers and white cotton shirts, the women in calico petticoats, ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton

... Belle, "but pray spare me. I do not wish to hear anything about Armenian, especially this evening." "Why this evening?" said I. Belle made no answer. "I will not spare you," said I; "this evening I intend to make you conjugate an Armenian verb." "Well, be it so," said Belle; "for this evening you shall command." "To command is hramahyel," said I. "Ram her ill, indeed," said Belle; "I do not wish to begin with that." "No," said I, "as we have come to the verbs, we will begin regularly; hramahyel is a verb of the second ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow

... derivative from the Scotch verb "bra," to make a loud and disagreeable noise (see Jamieson); ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... (said he) he had read him in the original: for nothing, continued the parson, is commoner than for men now-a-days to pretend to have read Greek authors, who have met with them only in translations, and cannot conjugate a verb in mi. ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding

... not "ungrammatical" as far as the Hebrew language is concerned, notwithstanding that it was rejected in the reign of James I. *lechem*, "bread," is evidently the accusative noun to the transitive verb *yiten*, "He shall give." Nor is it "false," for the same noun, *lechem*, "bread," is no doubt the antecedent to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 223, February 4, 1854 • Various

... words in the English language are divided into nine great classes. These classes are called the Parts of Speech. They are Article, Noun, Adjective, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection. Of these, the Noun is the most important, as all the others are more or less dependent upon it. A Noun signifies the name of any person, place or thing, in fact, anything of which we can have either thought or idea. There are two ...
— How to Speak and Write Correctly • Joseph Devlin

... meaning and the resonance of their rhythm; they produced a clearer image in my mind; after their fashion, they gave me a picture of the object described. Colored by its adjective and vivified by its verb, the name became a living reality: what it said I saw. And thus, gradually, was the magic of words revealed to me, when the chances of, my undirected reading placed a few easy standard ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre

... nothing. He had noticed Claire's slip, and the verb had sent him into a thousand realized dreams. The next instant he was cursing himself for a fool. "Fools, all of us," he thought. "Philip, too, warming himself with dreams of Claire." Before the nearness of the Spaniard's personality, Howard Barkley ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades

... grammar in his hat, and often found a chance, while he was waiting for a large piece of iron to get hot, to open his book with his black fingers, and go through a pronoun, an adjective or part of a verb, without being ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton

... to be. Nothing else in the world acts like a porpoise; therefore there must be a word meaning to act like a porpoise; and that word is the verb 'to porp.'" ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... at school—in connection with the Latin verb ministro," said Mr. Linton. "Well, Mr. Holland, I am glad that you take such a view of your calling, for I am anxious that you should do me ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore

... line 4 (Which might...could save) in parentheses; thus construing which might not be withstood and whence none could save as adjectival clauses qualifying whirlwinds (3), and taking bore (3) as a transitive verb governing All who approached their sphere (5). This, which I believe to be the true construction, is perhaps indicated quite as clearly by the pointing adopted in the text—a pointing moreover which, on metrical grounds, is, I think, preferable to that proposed by Mr. Bradley. I have ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... trouble to borrow but never take the trouble to repay. For the Yang-ban was a "gentleman," he was. It was beneath his dignity to work—even to guide the reins of the horse he rode—but it was not beneath his dignity to sponge on his friends (I think the verb "to sponge" is too expressive to remain slang) or to borrow without repaying. Moreover, in case of extremity, it is said that Mother Yang-ban and Sister Ann might take in washing, as is recorded in the classic lays of our own land, but Father never defiled himself by doing anything so dishonorable ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe

... and patch up a lost cause. He chuckled at the feline manners of the little lady whom they had all known so long as Mrs. Edgar Lee Reeves, her purring voice, her frequent over-emphasis of exuberant adjectives, her accidental choice of the sort of verb that had the effect of smashed crockery, her receptiveness to the underlying drama of the situation and the cunning with which she managed to hide her anxiety to be "on" in the scene which must inevitably come. He examined his old friend, Thatcher, under whose perfect drawing-room ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton

... Gambier, letting his stick do the part of a damnatory verb on one of the enemy, while he added, "The ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... the correlations and abstract properties of the appearance of the star, we do not know the appearance itself. Now you may, for the sake of illustration, compare the different appearances of the star to the conjugation of a Greek verb, except that the number of its parts is really infinite, and not only apparently so to the despairing schoolboy. In vacuo, the parts are regular, and can be derived from the (imaginary) root according to the laws of grammar, i.e. of perspective. The ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... "Why shouldn't I try to make a pleasant evening? And besides, ain't I going to do those things? What difference does it make about the mood and tense of a mere verb? Didn't uncle tell me only last Saturday, that I might as well go down to Arizona and hunt for diamonds? A fellow might as well make a good ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner

... roar, and feeling wonderfully refreshed thereby—for Bab was too proud to have shed a tear in Aunt Anastasia's and Miss Strictham's presence—the poor little thing got hold of her lesson-books and prepared to learn a French verb, some questions and answers in English history, and to do a sum in compound addition, and write ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... participle from the verb Lego, which signifies to assign anything to a person to do; hence legatus is one to whom something is delegated. The Roman word Legatus had various senses. Here the word legatus, which is the word that Plutarch intends, is a superior officer ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long

... surveyors with the bush formula: 'Good day, mate!' she had felt with deep aggrievement that she no longer desired the appellative. She had not yet realised that while the word 'mate' in Australese, like the verb AIMER in French, may be used as a mere colloquial term, it implies in the deeper sense a sanctity of relation upon which hangs the whole code of ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... Line 1. The verb tib with pasru expresses the aim of Gish to secure an interpretation for his dream. This disposes of Langdon's note 1 on page 211 of his edition, in which he also erroneously speaks of our text as "late." Pasru is not a variant ...
— An Old Babylonian Version of the Gilgamesh Epic • Anonymous

... eile], "took possession of," on the suggestion of Muretus, Var. Lect. xv. 10, who thought it superfluous for Xenophon to say that Cyrus merely saw the tents. Lion, however, not unreasonably supposes this verb to be intended to mark the distance at which Cyrus passed from the tents, that is, that he passed within sight of them, the Cilicians having retired only a ...
— The First Four Books of Xenophon's Anabasis • Xenophon

... conjectures have been made here, e.g. {anetheken elon}, {anetheken ion}, {anetheke theo}, {anetheken eont}, {anetheke neon}: the last, which is Bentley's, is perhaps the best; but it is doubtful whether the active form of the verb ...
— The History Of Herodotus - Volume 2 (of 2) • Herodotus

... retains many impersonal forms, LIST is mainly used as a personal verb, as in Much Ado, ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... governor you could have an extra week. We miss you at center forward. So hurry up, but mind you don't get torpeedod—we hope they'll just miss you. It would be rotten luck if you never saw one. We've given up German this term—beastly language; it's just like a Hun to keep the verb till the end, so that you never know what he's ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan

... forget her smile, devoid of art, Her heavenly sweetness and her frozen heart? How easy thus forever to compound, And ring new changes on recurring sound; How easy, with a reasonable store Of useful epithets repeated o'er, Verb, substantive, and pronoun, to transpose, And into tinkling metre hitch dull prose. But I—who tremble o'er each word I use, And all that do not aid the sense refuse, Who cannot bear those phrases out ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... the sick man a long and interested sermon, mingled with Latin words, in which the verb "to give" comes in at every line: whatever you do, don't give to others, give to me; give to my convent, don't give ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand

... being thus put under the mind for verb and noun, the poet is he who can articulate it. For though life is great, and fascinates, and absorbs; and though all men are intelligent of the symbols through which it is named; yet they cannot originally use them. We are symbols and inhabit symbols; workmen, work, and ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... The Noun or Substantive, The Pronoun, The Adjective, The Verb, The Adverb, The Preposition, The Conjunction, ...
— A Week of Instruction and Amusement, • Mrs. Harley

... arrondissement, we are forced to accept its picturesque patois. Tirer une carotte has a dozen allied meanings, but it suffices to give it here as: To dupe. Monsieur de Rochefide, like all little minds, was terribly afraid of being carotte. The noun has become a verb. From the very start of his passion for Madame Schontz, Arthur was on his guard, and he was, therefore, very rat, to use another word of the same vocabulary. The word rat, when applied to a young girl, means the guest or the one entertained, but ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac

... swirling lariat. Colorado is not, as some conjecture, a corruption or revised edition of Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, who was sent out by the Spanish Viceroy of Mexico in 1540 in search of the seven cities of Cibola: it is from the verb colorar—colored red, or ruddy—a name frequently given to rivers, rocks, and ravines in the lower country. Nor do we care to go back as far as the sixteenth century for the beginning of an enterprise that is still very young and possibly a little fresh. In 1803 the United States purchased ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... me, is my death, and thus he is immortal to unnumbered thousands. If I am right, will you look at the proof through the first third or half of the papers, and see whether the Factor comes before us in that way? If not, it is merely the alteration of the verb here and there ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... correspondence here presented to the public. The stirring story of these tin-soldier campaigns occupies the greater share of the book, though interspersed with many pages of scattered verse, not a little Gaelic idiom and verb, a half-made will and the chaptering of a novel. This game of tin soldiers, an intricate "Kriegspiel," involving rules innumerable, prolonged arithmetical calculations, constant measuring with foot-rules, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to cease, and in this sense it is met with in Spenser and other poets. Mr Todd informs us that it is still in use in the north of England. Ben Jonson, in his "Sad Shepherd," converts the verb ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... civil to the young man, of course. There was no reason indeed that he should be otherwise than civil—only that lurking terror in his mind, that this was the man his wife had loved. Had loved? is there any past tense to that verb? ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon

... stories that you get this atmosphere. It spreads practically everywhere—the very bankruptcies and the sordid details of town and country life are overshadowed and in a certain sense dis-realised by it. Indeed that verb which, like most new words, has been condemned by some precisians, but which was much wanted, applies to no prose writer quite so universally as to Balzac. He is a dis-realiser, not by style as some are, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... unlicensed, had spread a report of his great wealth and power. I was thus the object of a universal stare. At one time on the banks there were considerably over a thousand natives going through the several tenses and moods of the verb "to stare," or exhibiting every phase of the substantive, viz.—the stare peremptory, insolent, sly, cunning, modest, and casual. The warriors of the Sultana, holding in one hand the spear, the bow, and sheaf or musket, embraced with the other ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley

... to be sure," rejoined Squeers. "We go upon the practical mode of teaching, Nickleby; the regular education system. C-l-e-a-n, clean, verb active, to make bright, to scour. W-i-n, win, d-e-r, der, winder, a casement. When the boy knows this out of book, he goes and does it. It's just the same principle as the use of the globes. Where's ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... ran), "why have you forsaken us? We have looked for you, wished for you and talked of you for days, but you seem to have determined that we shall learn the full meaning of the verb 'to disappoint.' Will you not come over to dinner to-day? I think you have played ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various

... give him the whip, Gump," and luckily the old man could not distinguish between the past and present tenses of the verb, so that I was spared a lie. The little thief ran away with the whip in his hand, and it was long before the incident ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... to convey the idea of past tense, the ending "ed" is popularly employed, but when he may he drops the "e." While he will properly use the present tense of a verb he goes out of his way to add the "(e)d." So he says "know-d," "see-d." But he is not always consistent. He prefers "kilt," the old form, ...
— Sergeant York And His People • Sam Cowan

... the Bible narrative correspond to the philosophy and philology of the case; for, by the use of the substantive verb, in the past tense, implying progressive being, according to the usual force of the word in Hebrew, we are told literally, "the earth became without form and void." God did not create it so, but after it was ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... would you, likewise, expect commission?—Why not? I am the best friend of the little lawyer with the long nose.—I was inquiring of you about flats.—It were better that you should be sharp, Sir.—I was not born yesterday (proverb.)—Right (adjective) you are, Sir; we will write (verb) to you till you take or let something, not alone I, but also some others; if you refuse me something, I will be very discontented.—Have you ever let well alone? (idiom).—We have let many things alone (bare), but you must, notwithstanding, pay for the fixtures.—I think I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various



Words linked to "Verb" :   transitive, participle, phrasal verb, copula, verbify, modal auxiliary verb, verb phrase, doubly transitive verb form, major form class, intransitive verb, infinitive, open-class word, intransitive verb form, verbal, conjugation, transitive verb, content word, linking verb, reflexive verb, modal verb



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