What´s in a verb?

A sentence can offer a moment of quiet, it can crackle with energy or it can just lie there, listless and uninteresting.

Una oración nos puede ofrecer un momento de paz y quietud o puede vibrar con energía, puede yacer inmóvil, irrelevante y anodina.

 

What makes the difference? 

¿Qué hace que puedan ser tan distintas las oraciones?

The verb.

El verbo.

Verbs kick-start sentences: Without them, words would simply cluster together in suspended animation. 

We often call them action words, but verbs also can carry 

sentiments (love, fear, lust, disgust), 

hint at cognition (realize, know, recognize), 

bend ideas together (falsify, prove, hypothesize), 

assert possession (own, have) 

and conjure existence itself (is, are).

Fundamentally, verbs fall into two classes: static (to be, to seem, to become) and dynamic (to whistle, to waffle, to wonder). 

These two classes are sometimes called “passive” and “active,” and the former are also known as “linking” or “copulative” verbs.

Static verbs stand back, politely allowing nouns and adjectives to take center stage. 

Dynamic verbs thunder in from the wings, announcing an event, producing a spark, adding drama to an assembled group.

Except from an article in New York Times

Constance Hale, a journalist based in San Francisco, is the author of “Sin and Syntax” and the forthcoming “Vex, Hex, Smash, Smooch.” She covers writing and the writing life at sinandsyntax.com.

 

She Walks in Beauty

By Lord Byron (George Gordon)

She walks in beauty, like the night

   Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

   Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

   Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

   Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

   Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

   How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

   So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

   But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

   A heart whose love is innocent!