What Is a Linking Verb?
Linking verbs aren’t as showy as action verbs. Action verbs make people talk, dogs bark, and phones ring — behavior that you can hear, see, and do. But are there any linking verbs that are also action verbs?
Forms of be, seem, and become never function as action verbs. But many other linking verbs can act as action verbs when they’re transitive verbs — meaning that they take a direct object instead of a subject complement.
Linking verbs that refer to senses describe the subject of the sentence. When they’re used as action verbs, they refer to what the subject is doing.
Linking Verb
Action Verb
The soup tasted spicy.
Hank tasted the soup.
That bridge looked dangerous.
I looked at the bridge.
Her perfume smells sweet.
She smells her perfume.
I don’t feel well.
My mom feels my forehead.
The house appeared fine.
He appeared in the doorway.
Likewise, when a linking verb describes a state of being, it connects the subject to its description. But when it functions as an action verb, it’s meant more literally.
Linking Verb
Action Verb
We got too cold outside.
We got our jackets.
The crowd went wild.
The crowd went home.
I’m growing impatient.
I’m growing tomatoes in the backyard.
Lucy fell silent.
Lucy fell down.
They stayed friends.
They stayed in town.
