A verb is a kind of word. Its job is to signal an action, an occurrence or a state of being in a sentence.
This tells the reader/listener who is doing what, what is happening or that somebody or thing… well, just ‘is’ or ‘was’. In fact, in order to actually be a sentence a group of words must contain a verb.
It is worth noting here that verbs have tenses. The tense of a verb informs the audience whether the action happened
- in the past – ten minutes ago, yesterday, last week or any time gone by
- the present – at this very moment
- the future – in a few minutes, tomorrow, next week or any time yet to come.