Meaning & use
verb agreement
Last updated
Meanings
noununcountabletechnical
The grammar rule that a verb's form must match its subject in number and person.
Grammar: Used as an uncountable noun: talk about 'verb agreement', not 'a verb agreement'.
Patterns
- subject-verb agreement
- verb agreement with something
- agreement between a subject and a verb
Subject-verb agreement is the reason we say 'she walks' but 'they walk'.
Many learner errors come from poor verb agreement in long sentences with extra phrases.
The teacher marked the essay down for several verb agreement mistakes.
noununcountabletechnical
The matching of a verb with a noun or pronoun it relates to in gender, number, or person in some languages.
Grammar: Often used for languages such as French or Spanish, where verbs change to match the subject.
Patterns
- verb agreement in a language
- agreement between a verb and its subject
In Spanish, verb agreement shows who is doing the action even when the pronoun is left out.
Students of French spend a lot of time practicing verb agreement.
Common combinations
- subject-verb agreement
- Subject-verb agreement is tested in almost every English grammar exam.
- a verb agreement error
- The editor fixed a verb agreement error in the first paragraph.
- check verb agreement
- Always check verb agreement after you add a long phrase to the subject.
- verb agreement rules
- These verb agreement rules are easy once you find the real subject.
- break verb agreement
- The sentence breaks verb agreement because the subject is plural and the verb is singular.
Synonyms and how they differ
Word family
Commonly confused: verb agreement or verb tense?
verb agreement vs verb tense
Tense is about time (past, present, future); verb agreement is about matching the subject, as in 'he runs' versus 'they run'.
Practice
Choose the sentence with correct verb agreement.
Choose one answer.
The real subject is 'list', which is singular, so the verb must be 'is'; the plural noun 'names' sits inside a prepositional phrase and does not control the verb. 'Are', 'were', and 'have' all break agreement by matching the nearby plural noun instead.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “verb agreement”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.