The word "were" is a form of the verb "to be". It can be both a main verb (The children were cold.), or an auxiliary verb (The children were complaining about the cold.).
Hiya,
'want' would be a main verb as it is virtually impossible for an auxiliary to stand alone. Auxiliaries must always occur with a main verb, but main verbs can stand alone. In English, there...
The auxiliary verb also is called a helping verb. For it's used to help form the tenses that are composed of two verbs.
An example is the past tense that's called 'passe compose', or 'composed...