finite verb

[fahy-nahyt vurb]

noun

Grammar.

1. a verb form that distinguishes person, number, and tense, as well as mood or aspect: in She works from home, the verb works indicates a third-person singular subject (she ), present tense, and indicative mood, the mood used for ordinary statements and questions about facts.

Word History and Origins

Origin of finite verb¹

First recorded in 1785–95

Example Sentences

He resumes the exhortation in a form slightly changed and with rising emphasis, passing from the participle to the finite verb: “And take the helmet of salvation.”

Read more on Project Gutenberg

Using these as auxiliaries the finite verb makes a whole series of periphrastic tenses.

Read more on Project Gutenberg

As for the verb, Sweet has well said that “the really characteristic feature of the English finite verb is its inability to stand alone without a pronominal prefix.”

Read more on Project Gutenberg

When the question lies between a participle and a finite verb in the construction of a sentence, the looseness of the Egyptian syntax will seldom afford any clue to the reading which the translator had before him.

Read more on Project Gutenberg

Translation.—This sentence contains only one finite verb, the principal one.

Read more on Project Gutenberg