Verbs vs. Adverbs: What’s The Difference?

Verbs and adverbs are two of the major parts of speech and are often used alongside each other in sentences. These two very commonly used categories of words have similar names, but they are used quite differently from each other. 

In this article, we look at what verbs and adverbs are, explain the important functions they have in sentences, give some tips on how to tell them apart, and provide example sentences that show how we typically use both verbs and adverbs.

What is a verb?

A verb is a word that is used with a subject to state what action a subject performs, what state it is in, or the relation it has to something else. Verbs are used to fulfill the role of the predicate, which is needed to form a complete sentence. While the subject tells us who or what is doing something, the verb/predicate tells us what they do. For example:

• Dogs (subject) bark (predicate, verb). 

In general, there are three major types of verbs: verbs that refer to physical actions, verbs that refer to mental actions, and verbs that refer to states of being. In brief, physical actions refer to actions that bodies or objects perform, mental actions refer to actions the brain performs, and states of being describe someone’s or something’s existence or qualities they have.

Here are some examples of each type:

• Physical action: jump, run, cry, eat, swim, climb, play, read
• Mental action: think, consider, believe, hope, doubt, wonder
• State of being: be, exist, become, have, turn, continue

We have only scratched the surface of verbs. To learn a lot more about verbs, check out our detailed guide to verbs here.

List of verbs

There are a huge number of verbs out there. This list gives examples of just a tiny number of them:

• appear, bounce, catch, deny, envision, fasten, grab, hang, imagine, jiggle, kick, laugh, make, notice, open, pounce, quake, ride, sing, tickle, unlock, vex, worry, xerox, yell, zoom

Examples of verbs in a sentence

The following sentences show how we typically use verbs in sentences:

• Birds fly.
• I think the movie starts at eight.
• My sister is a psychiatrist.
• The milk turned sour because he left it out overnight.
• They washed, dryed, and ironed the clothes.

What is an adverb?

An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, adjective, clause, or another adverb. Like adjectives, adverbs provide more information about the words that they modify. For example, the sentence Jack ran quickly uses the adverb quickly to modify the verb ran. The adverb describes how Jack ran.

Generally speaking, adverbs can be divided into several different types. These are:

• Conjunctive adverbs: Adverbs that act as conjunctions to grammatically join two sentences/clauses together. Some examples include however, therefore, meanwhile, thus, and consequently.
• Adverbs of frequency: Adverbs that say how often something happens. Examples include frequently, never, always, and sometimes.
• Adverbs of time: Adverbs that say when something happens. Examples include now, yesterday, soon, eventually, and yet.
• Adverbs of manner: Adverbs that say how something happens. Examples include weakly, skillfully, amazingly, slowly, and surprisingly.
• Adverbs of degree: Adverbs that describe intensity or quality. Examples include very, really, extremely, somewhat, less, and most.
• Adverbs of place: Adverbs that say where something happens. Examples include here, there, nowhere, under, up, left, and right.

To learn much more about adverbs and how we use them, check our detailed guides to adverbs by clicking here.

List of adverbs

The following list gives some examples of the many different adverbs we use.

• apologetically, badly, creepily, down, everywhere, forward, greatly, hungrily, in, joyously, kinetically, lazily, more, needlessly, over, perfectly, quietly, really, seriously, there, underground, very, where, yearly, zestily

Examples of adverbs in a sentence

The following sentences give examples of how we typically use adverbs.

• She sadly walked away.
• Thankfully, we got there early.
• He was really tired yesterday.
• When I harshly grabbed the very old door, the handle fell off.
• I’d never eaten a durian before because I’d heard it smells bad. Nevertheless, I tried eating the really stinky fruit anyway.

Discover more about adverbs in this guide about adverbs vs. adjectives.

verb vs. adverb

While verbs and adverbs are both major parts of speech, we use them in different ways. 

How to differentiate between verbs and adverbs

Verbs and adverbs serve completely different grammatical functions. Verbs perform the job of the predicate, and adverbs are modifiers. 

Because a predicate is required to form a complete sentence, every sentence must have a verb. As the predicate, the verb says what the subject is doing or what its condition is. If a word is expressing an action (physical or mental) or state of being, it is a verb and not an adverb. In the sentence Cheetahs run fast the word run is a verb and not an adverb. It is expressing what action the subject cheetahs performed.  

The other main difference between verbs and adverbs is that adverbs are modifiers and verbs are not. That means it is possible that a sentence may not have any adverbs in it. Adverbs answer questions like “How?” “Where?” or “In what way?” rather than express action. If a word is providing more detail about a verb, adjective, or adverb, that word is an adverb and not a verb. Looking at the sentence cheetahs run fast again, the word fast is an adverb because it is telling us how the cheetahs run. Fast is modifying the verb run so it must be an adverb.

Examples of verbs and adverbs used in a sentence

To finish things off, let’s look at some examples that show how we often used verbs and adverbs together to make interesting sentences.

• Luckily, I recovered quickly from my sprained ankle.
• The queen magically transformed into a dragon.
• He has never been here before.
• Yesterday, we got really lost.