Strong verbs are verbs that convey many direct meanings without the aid of transformations or titles. Using solid verbs often chooses the right style. Powerful actions make your writing shorter, help you avoid vague interpretations, and can make your readers more interested. Therefore, when you do not use a variety of powerful verbs, you run the risk of losing the interest of your readers through repeated and contradictory actions.
In other words, a strong verb is a specific, descriptive action used in writing and helps to make writing shorter. Descriptive and concise writing therefore makes writing more effective.
Examples of Strong Verbs
Let us work on its example with verbs highlighted:
- She skips to the store.
- Five boys drank the whole milk in the school function.
- The seat curves to fit your bottom.
- The school stamps an identification mark on the bottom of each chair.
- He oversaw the organization
- The man strode along the platform.
- Jim treasures country living.
- I grew with the best players.
- She came as a surprise to all in school.
- I began investigating at early stage.
What are Weak Verbs?
Weak verbs are vague verb tenses. They have no descriptive qualities that make writing interesting. Some of these verbs require “ed” in the end to form the past tense of the word. When weak actions are used in sentences, they hinder the clarity and power of the active voice.
Examples of Weak Verbs
Let us work on its example with verbs highlighted:
- The sailors were moving to the barracks
- He looked at the house with a smile
- The poor sailor smiled just before he was leaving
- He kept waving to the friend who drove
- Every one played a soccer match at a place near to their house
- She closed the drawer and move out of the house
- She cleaned before leaving the premises
- His friend got annoyed with him
- His father looked closely to the reports
- The opponent bounced back unexpectedly
Let us work on the difference between strong and weak verbs:
The difference between a weak action and a strong action is based on the past tense of the action. Weak actions (often called common verbs) form the past tense by adding ed, -d, or -t to the basic form – or present tense – of the verb, such as calling, calling and walking, moving.
Strong verbs (often called extraordinary actions) form the past tense or past participle (or both) in different ways but usually by changing the vowel of the present tense form, such as giving, giving and sticking.
With weak verbs, the stem vowel does not change in the past or past participle tense.
Other examples of the week, or regular, verbs would be as follows, where the verb is listed on the left with the past/past participle on the right:
- Add > added
- Beg > begged
- Call > called
- Damage > damaged
- Earn > earned
- Mark > marked
- Taste > tasted
- Yell > yelled
- Struggle > struggled
- Hang > hanged
By contrast, strong verbs generally do have a change in the stem vowel in the past or past participle.
Other examples of strong verbs would be:
- Blow > blew (past tense), blown (past participle)
- Break > broke (past tense), broken (past participle)
- Do > did (past tense), done (past participle)
- Feed > fed (past tense and past particle)
- Lie (down) > lay (past tense), lain (past participle)
- Speak > spoke (past tense), spoken (past participle)
- Drink > drank (past tense), drunk (past participle)
- Fight > fought (past tense), fought (past participle)
- Grow > grew (past tense), grown (past participle)
- Sing > sang (past tense), sung (past participle)
As you can see, there is no hard and fast rule to determine if an action is a church or a ritual. With less than 200 powerful verbs in English, the best way to memorize their use is past and present.