Verb complements are words or phrases that complete a verb's meaning. These include direct objects ("I ate lunch"), indirect objects ("I gave him a gift"), object complements ("They painted the house blue"), and subject complements for linking verbs ("She is smart"). Different verbs require different complement patterns to express their meaning fully.
Classify complements by asking questions: What/whom after transitive verbs = direct object; To/for whom = indirect object. For linking verbs, ask what property or identity is assigned to the subject.
You've already worked with direct and indirect objects, and you understand that transitive verbs require an object while intransitive verbs do not. Verb complements extend that framework: a complement is any word or phrase that completes a verb's meaning. The category is broader than "object" — it includes everything a verb needs to form a grammatically and semantically complete predicate.
The most straightforward complement is the direct object: the entity directly affected by the action. "I ate lunch" — "lunch" answers the question "ate what?" For transitive verbs, the direct object is obligatory; without it, the sentence feels incomplete ("I ate" is fine for an intransitive reading, but "She resembles" demands an object to complete it). When a verb also has an indirect object, there are two ways to express it: the double-object construction ("I gave her a gift," where "her" is the indirect object and "a gift" is the direct object) and the prepositional version ("I gave a gift to her"). The indirect object always names the recipient or beneficiary of the action, answering "to whom" or "for whom."
Object complements are a step up in complexity. They appear after the direct object and rename or describe it: "They painted the house blue" ("blue" describes the house after painting), "She called him a genius" ("a genius" renames him as the result of her calling). The object complement follows from the direct object — remove the direct object, and the object complement loses its referent. The test is whether the complement describes a state caused by the verb: "They elected her president" means that "president" is what she became as a result of being elected.
Subject complements belong to linking verbs — verbs like "be," "seem," "become," "appear," "feel," "taste," "smell." Unlike transitive verbs, linking verbs do not transfer action to an object; they connect the subject to a description or identity. "She is smart" — "smart" is a predicate adjective, a subject complement describing the subject. "He became a doctor" — "a doctor" is a predicate nominative, renaming the subject. The key test: can you replace the verb with "is" or "equals"? If "She is smart" feels synonymous with the original, you have a subject complement. If not, you have an object.
Recognizing which complement pattern a verb takes matters for two reasons. First, different verbs impose different patterns: you can "make her happy" (object complement) but not "make her" without the complement; you can "consider him a friend" but not "consider him" in the same sense. Second, misreading the complement type leads to case errors with pronouns: "It was she who called" is correct because "she" is a subject complement after the linking verb "was," not an object — even though it sounds awkward to English ears accustomed to the colloquial "It was her."