Weak verbs, often auxiliary verbs like “to be” and “to have,” can create passive voice and weaken writing. Regular verbs requiring “-ed” are also weak. Strong verbs are irregular and change internally.
A weak verb is typically an auxiliary verb that is used in conjunction with a main verb resulting in a sentence that feels weak or passive. This type of verb is often used in sentences that have a passive voice, although auxiliary verbs can be more effective in some cases and are commonly used on their own. The most commonly used weak verbs are various forms of “to be” and “to have”. A weak verb can also refer to a regular verb that can be changed to the past tense through a basic suffix such as “-ed.”
While using a weak verb isn’t inherently harmful to a piece of writing, overusing such verbs can result in writing that feels “weak.” The most common problem with this type of verb is that it can create writing commonly called a “passive voice.” This means that the action in a sentence is happening to the subject of the sentence, rather than the subject of the sentence taking or doing the action itself. The passive voice created through the use of a weak verb doesn’t always make a sentence improper or poorly written, but it can make a written work less impactful.
A clear example of a passive voice created due to a weak verb is in a sentence like “The ball was kicked by the boy.” In this sentence, “The ball” is the subject of the sentence and the action of the sentence, “kicked”, is performed on it rather than by it. This creates a passive voice within the sentence through the use of the weak auxiliary verb “was”, a form of “to be”. The same sentence can be written without a weak verb and becomes active instead of passive like “The boy kicked the ball”, in which the new subject “The boy” is doing the action.
In some contexts, however, the term “weak verb” can refer to how a verb is conjugated, rather than the idea of passive and active voice. This meaning of the term refers to regular verbs which are considered “weak” because they require the use of a suffix, usually “-ed”, to form the past tense of the verb. Strong verbs, in this case, are irregular verbs that can form the past tense through some internal change rather than “helping” from a suffix. An example of this type of weak verb is “walk,” where the past tense “walked” requires a suffix, while “run” is a strong verb since the internal change to “ran” moves it to the past tense.
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