I am facing a problem while differentiating between the use of dare as an auxiliary verb and as a main verb. Most of the web sites say that you can know it by the way it's used but all the sentences I come across, they just confuse me more and more. Consider the following two examples.

1. None dares to speak freely about the political issue.
2. If you dare breath a word about it, Ill never talk to you again.

In the first sentence, it's clear from the infinitive that dare is used as a main verb. But how would we know that if this sentence is given to us in MCQs.
Please help we with that.

I guess I would ask myself if the sentence could be stated without the dare and still hold the same relevance. In my opinion the second sentence would easily convey the point without the word dare.

Not a English major (AT ALL), but that's how I read it.

If you dare breath a word about it, Ill never talk to you again.
If you breath a word about it, Ill never talk to you again.

Simply put you would perform the act of daring someone to do something. If you refer to a persons action as they dare to do so, I would imagine that it does not constitute itself as a main verb. But like you said the first sentence isn't stating someone is being dared to do something, but rather they are daring to do something.

Good luck, the more I think aboot this the wierder the question is...

Don't you know any Language teachers? Sometimes teachers that know other languages have a better grasp on the subtleties(SP?) of ours.