You're scrolling through a text, or maybe you're helping a kid with their homework, and suddenly you freeze. You see the word. His. You start overthinking it. Is his a verb? Does it show action? It feels like it belongs to someone, so maybe it's doing something?
No.
Let's just kill the suspense right now: his is absolutely not a verb. It never has been, and unless the English language undergoes a radical, ground-up reconstruction that defies a thousand years of linguistic evolution, it never will be.
Grammar is weird. We get it. Sometimes the most basic words are the ones that trip us up because we use them so instinctively that we stop analyzing what they actually do. If you've been staring at a sentence wondering if "his" is an action word, you’re likely just mixing up possession with performance.
The Core Reason Why His Is Not a Verb
To understand why "his" isn't a verb, we have to look at what a verb actually does. Verbs are the engines of sentences. They run, jump, think, exist, or explode. They change based on time—what linguists call tense. You can walk today, you walked yesterday, and you will walk tomorrow.
Try doing that with "his."
You can't "his" something. You didn't "hissed" a sandwich yesterday (well, unless you're a cat, but that's a different word entirely). Because "his" cannot be conjugated, it fails the most basic test of verb-hood. It doesn't have a past, present, or future form because it isn't an action or a state of being.
So, what is it then?
In the world of parts of speech, "his" wears two hats, but neither of them involve action. It is primarily a possessive pronoun or a possessive adjective (sometimes called a possessive determiner).
Basically, its only job in life is to point at something and say, "Hey, that belongs to that guy over there."
Think about the sentence: His dog barked. The verb is barked. That’s the action. His is just providing context for the dog. It’s a pointer. It’s descriptive. It tells us which dog we’re talking about. If you swapped "his" for "the loud" or "the brown," the sentence structure stays the same because "his" is functioning as a descriptor.
The Confusion Between Possession and Action
Honestly, it’s easy to see why people get confused. Our brains sometimes associate "owning" something with the "act" of ownership. You might think, "If he owns the car, isn't that an action?"
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Sure, owning is a verb. To possess is a verb. But the word "his" is the result of that ownership, not the act itself.
It’s a shortcut.
Instead of saying "The book that belongs to him," we just say "His book." We are condensing a relationship into a single syllable. This is why linguists like Noam Chomsky or the folks over at the Oxford English Dictionary categorize these as functional words. They are the glue. They aren't the bricks.
Let’s look at some examples of "his" in the wild:
- As a Possessive Adjective: "He left his keys on the counter." Here, it’s sitting right in front of the noun "keys," describing who they belong to.
- As a Possessive Pronoun: "The victory was his." In this case, it stands alone. It replaces the noun phrase "his victory."
Notice how in both cases, nothing is happening within the word "his." The action in the first sentence is "left." The state of being in the second is "was."
Why This Question Pops Up on Google So Much
If you’re wondering why so many people search "is his a verb," you aren't alone. It usually stems from "functional shift" or "anthimeria," which is a fancy way of saying we sometimes turn nouns into verbs in slang. We "adult," we "Google," we "Uber."
But "his" is a closed-class word.
In linguistics, closed-class words (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions) rarely change. We don't just invent new pronouns and start using them as verbs. You can't "him" a person or "the" a car. It feels wrong because it violates the structural integrity of the English language.
Another reason for the confusion? The word hiss.
If you're typing fast, or if you're a non-native speaker, "hiss" (the sound a snake makes) is definitely a verb. "The snake hisses." "The cat hissed." If you lose an 's' in your head, you're suddenly looking at "his" and trying to make it move.
The Difference Between His and Verbs That Look Like Pronouns
There are words that play both sides of the fence. Take the word own.
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- I own a cat. (Verb)
- This is my own cat. (Adjective)
"His" doesn't have that flexibility. It is stuck in its lane.
Let's look at how it compares to actual verbs in a table-like breakdown of logic:
To be a verb, you need to pass the "Can I do it?" test.
Can you run? Yes.
Can you eat? Yes.
Can you his? No.
You also need to pass the "Will it change if I did it yesterday?" test.
Yesterday I ran.
Yesterday I ate.
Yesterday I... his-ed? No.
If it doesn't pass these, it’s a modifier or a substitute. In this case, "his" is substituting for a specific person’s name to show ownership. "John's hat" becomes "His hat." "John" is a noun, "John's" is a possessive noun, and "his" is the pronoun replacement.
Nuance: When "His" Feels Like It's Doing Work
Sometimes we use "his" in gerund phrases, which can be super confusing.
Take this sentence: "I was annoyed by his singing."
"Singing" looks like a verb, right? It’s an -ing word. But here, "singing" is actually a gerund—a verb acting like a noun. Because "singing" is acting like a noun, it needs a possessive adjective to describe it.
"His" is just there to tell us who is doing the singing that is annoying us. It is still not the verb. The verb in that sentence is was.
If you remove "was," the whole sentence falls apart. If you remove "his," the sentence still mostly works ("I was annoyed by singing"), it just becomes less specific. This proves "his" is a secondary helper, not the main event.
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Actionable Steps for Grammar Mastery
If you’re still second-guessing yourself when writing, there are a few quick ways to ensure you’re using parts of speech correctly without needing a PhD in linguistics.
- The "Replacement" Trick: If you think a word might be a verb, try replacing it with "jump" or "kick." If the sentence still makes grammatical sense (even if it's silly), it's a verb. "He his the ball" makes no sense. "He kicked the ball" does.
- Check the Subject: Every verb needs a subject doing the action. In "His phone rang," the phone is the subject. The phone is the thing doing the "ringing." "His" is just along for the ride.
- Use Tools Wisely: If you are writing professionally, tools like Grammarly or the Hemingway App are great, but they won't always explain why something is wrong. They’ll just tell you "his" is a pronoun.
- Read Aloud: This is the oldest trick in the book. Your ear is usually better at grammar than your brain. You’ve been hearing English your whole life. You know that "I his" sounds like gibberish. Trust that instinct.
Beyond the Basics
Understanding the role of "his" helps you clean up your writing significantly. When you realize that "his" is a descriptor, you start to see how to tighten your sentences.
Instead of: "It was his intention to go to the store." (Wordy, uses "his" to describe a noun).
Try: "He intended to go to the store." (Stronger, uses a real verb).
By identifying where you’re leaning on possessive pronouns instead of strong verbs, your prose becomes punchier and more direct.
English is a messy language. It's full of loanwords from French, German, and Latin. It has rules that it breaks constantly. But the distinction between a pronoun like "his" and a verb is one of the steady anchors.
Keep "his" in the possession category. Let the verbs handle the heavy lifting of the action. Your writing will be much better for it.
Next Steps for Better Writing:
Audit your recent emails or essays for "Possessive Overload." Look for sentences where you use "his [noun] was [adjective]" and see if you can replace them with a single, powerful verb. For example, change "His anger was visible" to "He seethed." This moves the focus from the pronoun/noun combo back to the action, where the energy of writing actually lives.
Refine your understanding of pronouns by comparing "his" with "him" and "he."
- He (Subject: The doer)
- Him (Object: The receiver)
- His (Possessive: The owner)
Once you categorize these in your mind, you’ll never look at the word "his" and wonder if it’s a verb ever again. It’s just a simple tool of ownership, tucked away in the toolbox of English grammar, waiting to point the way toward whoever owns the noun in question.