The place to start with verbs: what are they, actually? Without going into too much detail, a verb shows an event in time. This event may be an obvious action (like my favorite example verb, kill) or something not-obvious (like the hiding verbs of be or have).
Either way, verbs say that something happened (event) at some time
(tense), and they relate it to someone/something (the subject). To go
too much farther right now is to risk muddying the water with nuances and caveats. Let’s just agree with what I have written and move on.
Verbs also have some standard forms we need to know. An infinitive (to kill, to be, to have) is the basic form, often used in dictionaries, and states the basic activity. It has no subject. A finite verb (I kill, you were, he will have...) is any form of the verb + subject. A subject is a must, and the verb can be in any tense. An imperative (kill!, be!, have!) uses the basic activity as a command. Technically it has no subject (though you
is implied). Participles and gerunds, while related to verbs, are
beyond our scope right now. Forget I said anything about them.
So far this has been in English about English. I’ll connect it to Latin starting in the next couple of posts.
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