Word.ws English Dictionary

ergative verbs

ergative verbs is the plural of ergative verb.

Meaning of ergative verb

Noun

ergative verb (plural ergative verbs)

  1. An ambitransitive verb where the patient is the object of the transitive, but becomes the experiencer of the intransitive use.
    • Break is an ergative verb because when we say "The window broke", the window is the thing getting broken, it is not the vandal.
    Synonyms:
    labile verb

Questions about ergative verbs

What is ergative verbs the plural of?
Ergative verbs is the plural of ergative verb.

Words near ergative verbs in the dictionary

  1. ergatival
  2. ergative
  3. ergative case
  4. ergative cases
  5. ergative verb
  6. ergative verbs
  7. ergative-absolutive
  8. ergatively
  9. ergativeness
  10. ergatives
  11. ergativity

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ergative verbs (page history and authors); ergative verb (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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