auxiliary verb

Definition:

A verb that determines the mood or tense of another verb in a verb phrase. Also known as a helping verb. Contrast with lexical verb.

Etymology:

From the Latin, "help"

Examples and Observations:

• "The verbs be, have, do, and go are irregular in many of the world's languages. They are the most commonly used verbs in most languages and often pitch in as auxiliaries: 'helper' verbs that are drained of their own meanings so that they may combine with other verbs to express tense and other grammatical information, as in He is jogging, He has jogged, He is going to jog. Many language scientists believe that the meanings of these verbs--existence, possession, action, motion--are at the core of the meanings of all verbs, if only metaphorically."
  (Steven Pinker, Words and Rules. HarperCollins, 1999)



• "The auxiliary verbs of English are the following:
  
  1. can, may, will, shall, must, ought, need, dare [modals]
  2. be, have, do, use [non-modals]
  Some of them appear in idioms--be going, have got, had better/best, would rather/sooner (as in It is going to rain, I've got a headache, etc.)--and in such cases it is just the first verb (be, have, had, would) that is an auxiliary, not the whole idiom."
  (R. Huddleston and G. Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002)



• "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."
  (Isaac Newton)



• "A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds."
  (Sir Francis Bacon)



• "Let each become all that he was created capable of being."
  (Thomas Carlyle)



• "We are all worms, but I do believe I am a glowworm."
  (Winston Churchill)



• "After I die I shall return to earth as the doorkeeper of a bordello, and I won't let a one of you in."
  (Arturo Toscanini)



• "In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
  (Douglas Adams)

Pronunciation: og-ZIL-ya-ree vurb

Also Known As: helping verb, auxiliary, defective verb