Etymology From Middle English verbe, directly from Latin verbum (“word, verb”), reinforced by Old French verbe, from Proto-Indo-European *werdʰo-. Doublet of verve and word.
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Grammar, Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences A word that indicates an action, event, or state of being.
The word “speak” is an English verb.
In ſo moche that if any verbe be of the thyꝛde coniugation / I ſet out all his rotes and tenſes[…]1530 July 18, Iohan Palſgrave, “The Introduction”, in Leſclarciſſement de la langue francoyſe […] , London: Richard Pynſon, Iohan Haukyns, →OCLC, page 32; reprinted as Lesclarcissement de la langue françoyse, Genève: Slatkine Reprints, 1972:
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:
The InfiniBand verbs, which are closely modeled in the “Gen2” interface, provide the functional specification for the operations that should be allowed on an InfiniBand compliant adapter.2016, Ada Gavrilovska, Attaining High Performance Communications: A Vertical Approach:
Etymology From Middle English verbe, directly from Latin verbum (“word, verb”), reinforced by Old French verbe, from Proto-Indo-European *werdʰo-. Doublet of verve and word.
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Colloquial, Nonstandard To use any word that is or was not a verb (especially a noun) as if it were a verb.
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... .a. 1981 Feb 22, unknown Guardian editor as quoted by William Safire, On Language, in New York Times, pSM3
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.1993 January 25, Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes:
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Nouns should never be verbed.1997, David. F. Griffiths, Desmond J. Higham, learning LAT_EX, page 8:
In English, verbing nouns is okay2005 October 5, Jeffrey Mattison, “Letters”, in The Christian Science Monitor, page 8:
Records have been broken, races have been dedicated, dreams have been dreamed, starts have been falsed and nouns have been verbed.2011 September 1, Harry Pearson, “London 2012 can legacy by verbing the noun”, in The Guardian, archived from the original on 22 Sep 2024:
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Human sciences, Linguistics, Sciences, Social science, Social sciences Used as a placeholder for any verb.
For example, one-part versions of the proposition "The doctor pursued the lawyer" were "The doctor verbed the object," ...1946, Rand Corporation, The Rand Paper Series:
Each sentence had the same basic structure: The subject transitive verbed the object who intransitive verbed in the location.1964, Journal of Mathematical Psychology:
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The sentence frame was Dan verbed Ben approaching the store. This sentence frame was followed in all cases by He went inside.1998, Marilyn A. Walker, Aravind Krishna Joshi, Centering Theory in Discourse: