pro-verb

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pro-verb

(prō′vûrb′)

A word or construction that takes the place of a verb or verb phrase, such as do in the sentence She likes ice cream and I do, too.

[pro(noun) + verb.]

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

pro′-verb`

a word that can substitute for a verb or verb phrase, as do in They never attend meetings, but I do.

[1905–10]

prov•erb

(ˈprɒv ərb)

n.

1. a short popular saying, usu. of unknown and ancient origin, that expresses effectively some commonplace truth or useful thought; adage; saw.

2. a person or thing commonly regarded as an embodiment or representation of some quality; byword.

3. a profound Biblical saying, maxim, or oracular utterance requiring interpretation.

[1275–1325; Middle English proverbe < Middle French < Latin prōverbium=prō- pro-¹ + verb(um) word + -ium -ium¹]

References in periodicals archive ?

In the past tense, did had originally been used as an anticipating pro-verb, which was now interpreted as underlining the factuality and thus the completion or accomplishment of the state-of-affairs denoted by the main verb.

What makes a syntactic change stop? On the decline of periphrastic do in early modern English affirmative declarative sentences

Other techniques are also used to join sentences together, for example, we use synonymy, place and time relaters, determiners, proforms (pronouns, pro-verbs, and other pro-forms), ellipsis, enumeration, parallelism (repetition of sentence structure), conjunctions and various transitions.