The main verb in a sentence is the word which represents the sentence’s central action, but sentences can and often do contain more than one verb form, sometimes even more than one main verb, as you’re about to discover. When trying to determine which word or words in a sentence are verbs, you should look for two features.

First, can you change the tense or timeframe of the word? Can you, for instance, make it happen in the past, or the future? If you can, it’s a verb because only verbs can change tense, that is, when they happen. The principal way English changes tense with verbs is by adding tense-markers like “have, did” ─ those make the verb past-tense ─ or “will” ─ “will” makes it future-tense ─ so if you have a word like “run,” try adding “have, did” and ask yourself if “have run” or “did run” makes sense. Does it? Yes, of course, it does. Can you make “run” future? Is it possible to say “will run”? Sure. That’s because “run” is a verb. But a noun like ─ I don’t know ─ “celery” can’t change tense. “I did celery that”? Or maybe someday in the future “I will celery that”? Nope, it’s just not possible to go “celery-ing.” Ever.

Second, here’s another feature unique to verbs in English. They can be replaced by “do, does, did, (have) done.” The English word “do” is a sort of “pro-verb.” It replaces verbs the same way pronouns replace nouns. In other words, just as you can substitute “it” for a noun like “celery” ─ I like celery; I like it ─ You can replace most verbs with a form of “do.”

For instance, “I ate the celery” can also be expressed as “I did (it).” If “did” can replace “ate,” then “ate” must be a verb, a verb that makes sense as long as you’re in a context where your reader or listener understands that “did (it)” means “ate (the celery).”