Is "to" a verb?

Question

If "to" is a preposition would it be a verb? 

Answer 1

I'm sorry, but I must disagree with Susie G.'s answer. It is easy to prove that to is not a verb even if we totally disregard the traditional semantic definition of verb as "an action or a state;" that is, there is no rational answer to the question What does it mean when you "to" something? But the fact that we cannot use to as we can almost all other members of the class of words called "verbs" in English is sufficient evidence that to is not a verb; consider *I to (it), *he tos, *she is toing, *we have tod, etc.

 

The word to is traditionally classified as a preposition, but there is no principle in English grammar that I am aware of that prepositions are also verbs, as an affirmative answer to the question you put in your "Description" field would imply. Perhaps the false association stems from one or both of two factors:

 

1. The use of to with a verb in its base form, e.g., to live, to dance, to die, is what is often called an infinitive, which is also regarded one of the forms that any verb can occur in. The status of to in infinitives has long been a topic of debate, but it is generally agreed that this usage has nothing to do in current English with the ordinary prepositional meaning of to as indicating direction, though historically this is precisely the genesis of the infinitive construction.

 

2. Prepositions are indeed frequent components of what are called multi-word verbs which Susie also mentions in her reply. These are idiomatic constructions like look at, give in and put up with, that is, combinations of verbs and prepositions (and often adverbs) that function as unitary verbs and have meanings which are often not simply the aggregated meanings of their component elements. But again, it's not the preposition like at or in that creates the multi-word verb, but instead the verb remains central to such idioms, as can be seen by the fact that only the verb elements take the characteristic verbal inflections, e.g. looked at and giving in.

 

 

 

Answer 2

Yes.  It is what we call a multi-word verb. I hope this helps.