Verbal may mean:
- Non-finite verb, a verb form that functions both as a verb and as another lexical category.
- A word or group of words that functions as a verb by serving as the head of a verb phrase. (In some languages, adjectives are verbals.)
- Pertaining to language or the use of words in general (be it spoken or written) as opposed to non-verbal expression, or to spoken words in particular (although, this is usually a common misuse where "oral" is the correct term, e.g. "oral" v. "written" contract -- rather than "verbal" v. "written"). Examples:
- Verbal abuse
- Verbal arithmetic
- Verbal enterprise, the ongoing open discussion on the positives and negatives of a business project completed.
- People
- Roger "Verbal" Kint, a major character in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects.
- Verbal (rapper), a Japanese rapper and music producer, and member of M-Flo, Mic Banditz and Teriyaki Boyz
- Other uses
- Verbal Arts Centre, Northern Ireland; the publisher of Verbal magazine
- Verbal Behavior, a book by B. F. Skinner
- Verbal Remixes & Collaborations, an EP album by Amon Tobin
Famous quotes containing the word verbal:
“The French are a tremendously verbal race: they kill you with their assurances, their repetitions, their reasons, their platitudes, their formulae, their propositions, their solutions.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)
“It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)
“Whatever is felt upon the page without being specifically named there—that, one might say, is created. It is the inexplicable presence of the thing not named, of the overtone divined by the ear but not heard by it, the verbal mood, the emotional aura of the fact or the thing or the deed, that gives high quality to the novel or the drama, as well as to poetry itself.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)