English irregular verbs


The English language has many irregular verbs, approaching 200 in normal use—and significantly more if prefixed forms are counted. In most cases, the irregularity concerns the past tense or the past participle.
The other inflected parts of the verb—the third person singular present indicative in -s, and the present participle and gerund form in -ing—are formed regularly in most cases. There are a few exceptions: the verb be has irregular forms throughout the present tense; the verbs have, do, go and say have irregular -s forms; and certain defective verbs lack most inflection.
The irregular verbs include many of the most common verbs: the dozen most frequently used English verbs are all irregular. New verbs usually follow the regular inflection, unless they are compound formations from an existing irregular verb.
Irregular verbs in Modern English typically derive from verbs that followed more regular patterns at a previous stage in the history of the language. In particular, many such verbs derive from Germanic strong verbs, which make many of their inflected forms through vowel gradation, as can be observed in Modern English patterns such as sing–sang–sung. The regular verbs, on the other hand, with their preterites and past participles ending in -ed, follow the weak conjugation, which originally involved adding a dental consonant . Nonetheless, there are also many irregular verbs that follow or partially follow the weak conjugation.
For information on the conjugation of regular verbs in English, as well as other points concerning verb usage, see English verbs.

Development

Most English irregular verbs are native, derived from verbs that existed in Old English. Nearly all verbs that have been borrowed into the language at a later stage have defaulted to the regular conjugation. There are a few exceptions, however, such as the verb catch, whose irregular forms originated by way of analogy with native verbs such as teach.
Most irregular verbs exist as remnants of historical conjugation systems. When some grammatical rule became changed or disused, some verbs kept to the old pattern. For example, before the Great Vowel Shift, the verb keep belonged to a group of verbs whose vowel was shortened in the past tense; this pattern is preserved in the modern past tense kept. Verbs such as peep, which have similar form but arose after the Vowel Shift, take the regular -ed ending.
The force of analogy tends to reduce the number of irregular verbs over time, as irregular verbs switch to regular conjugation patterns. This is more likely to occur with less common verbs ; hence it is often the more common verbs that tend to remain irregular. Many irregular verbs today have coexisting irregular and regular forms.
In a few cases, however, analogy has operated in the other direction. This is the case with the example of catch given above; others include wear and string, which were originally weak verbs, but came to be conjugated like the similar-sounding strong verbs bear and swing.
In American English, the regular forms of verbs account for more than 90% of instances, whereas British English has a regular form frequency of 69% according to a 1991 study.
The verb forms described in this article are chiefly those that are accepted in standard English; many regional dialects have different irregular forms, such as American English sneak–snuck and dive-dove as opposed to standard sneaked and dived respectively. In particular, it is fairly common in some types of non-standard speech to use past tenses as past participles, and vice versa; e.g "have went" instead of "have gone" in Southern American English.

Groups

The irregular verbs of Modern English form several groups with similar conjugation pattern and historical origin. These can be broadly grouped into two classes – the Germanic weak and strong groups – although historically some verbs have moved between these groups. There are also a few anomalous cases: the verbs be and go, which demonstrate suppletion; the verb do; and the defective modal verbs.

Strong verbs

Many irregular verbs derive from Germanic strong verbs, which display the vowel shift called ablaut, and do not add an ending such as -ed or -t for the past forms. These sometimes retain past participles with the ending -n, as in give–gave–given and ride–rode–ridden, but in other cases this ending has been dropped, as in come–came–come and sing–sang–sung. This verb group was inherited from the parent Proto-Germanic language, and before that from the Proto-Indo-European language. It was originally a system of regular verbs, and in Old English and modern German the system remains more or less regular; however in Modern English relatively few verbs continue to follow such a pattern, and they are classed as irregular.
Verbs that retain a strong-type inflection in modern English and add -n in the past participle include bear, beat, beget, bite, blow, break, choose, cleave, draw, drive, eat, fall, fly, forbid, forget, forsake, freeze, give, grow, know, lie, ride, rise, see, shake, shear, slay, smite, speak, steal, stride, strive, swear, take, tear, throw, tread, wake, weave, and write.
Those that do not add -n in the usual past participle include become, begin, bind, burst, cling, come, drink, fight, find, fling, get, grind, hang, hold, let, ring, run, seek, shed, shine, shit, shoot, shrink, sing, sink, sit, slide, sling, slink, slit, spin, spring, stand, sting, stink, strike, swim, swing, win, wind and wring.
The verbs sow and swell are now usually regular in the past tense, but retain the strong-type past participles sown and swollen. Other verbs retain participles in -n for certain adjectival uses, such as drunken and sunken. The verb crow is now regular in the past participle, but the strong past tense crew is sometimes used.
Some originally weak verbs have taken on strong-type forms by analogy with strong verbs. These include dig, dive, hide, mow, prove, saw, sew, show, spit, stick, strew, string, and wear.
For indication of the groups of strong verbs the listed words belong to, see the table at List of English irregular verbs.

Weak verbs

Some other irregular verbs derive from Germanic weak verbs, forming past tenses and participles with a -d or -t ending. The weak conjugation is also the origin of the regular verbs in -ed; however various historical sound changes have led to certain types of irregularity in some verbs. The main processes are as follows.
The irregular weak verbs can consequently be grouped as follows:
For weak verbs that have adopted strong-type past tense or past participle forms, see the section above on strong verbs. More information on the development of some of the listed verbs can be found at List of irregular verbs.

Anomalous cases

The following verbs do not fit exactly into any of the above categories:
Apart from the modal verbs, which are irregular in that they do not take an -s in the third person, the only verbs with irregular present tense forms are be, do, have and say.
The verb be has multiple irregular forms. In the present indicative it has am in the first person singular, is in the third person singular, and are in the plural and second person singular. It also has two past tense forms: was for the first and third persons singular, and were for the plural and second person singular. The past participle is been, and the present participle and gerund forms are regular: being. For more details see Indo-European copula.
As mentioned above, apart from its other irregularities, the verb do has the third person present indicative does pronounced with a short vowel:.
The verb have has a contracted third person present indicative form: has . This is formed similarly to the verb's past tense had.
The verb say displays vowel shortening in the third person present indicative : says. The same shortening occurs in the past form said.
For shortened forms of certain verbs and of their negations, see English auxiliaries and contractions.

Coincident forms

In regular English verbs, the past tense and past participle have the same form. This is also true of most irregular verbs that follow a variation of the weak conjugation, as can be seen in the [|list] below. Differences between the past tense and past participle generally appear in the case of verbs that continue the strong conjugation, or in a few cases weak verbs that have acquired strong-type forms by analogy—as with show. However, even some strong verbs have identical past tense and participle, as in cling–clung–clung.
In some verbs, the past tense, past participle, or both are identical in form to the basic form of the verb. This is the case with certain strong verbs, where historical sound changes have led to a leveling of the vowel modifications: for example, let has both past tense and past participle identical to the infinitive, while come has the past participle identical. The same is true of the verbs listed above under as having undergone coalescence of final consonants : bet, bid, etc.. The verb read has the same spelling in all three forms, but not the same pronunciation for the past tense and past participle, as it exhibits vowel shortening.
In a few cases the past tense of an irregular verb has the same form as the infinitive of a different verb. For example, bore and found may be past tenses of bear and find, but may also represent independent verbs of different meaning. Another example is lay, which may be the past tense of lie, but is also an independent verb. In fact lay derives from a causative of the verb from which lie derives. The two verbs are sometimes confused, with lay used in the intransitive senses prescriptively reserved for lie.

Prefixed verbs

Nearly all of the basic irregular verbs are single-syllable words. Their irregular inflected forms are generally single-syllable also, except for the past participles in -en like chosen and risen. However many additional irregular verbs are formed by adding prefixes to the basic ones: understand from stand, become from come, mistake from take, and so on. As a general rule, prefixed verbs are conjugated identically to the corresponding basic verbs; e.g understand–understood–understood and become–became–become, following the patterns of stand–stood–stood and come–came–come. However, there are occasional differences: in British English, for instance, the past participle of get is got, while that of forget is forgotten.
Only a few irregular verbs of more than one syllable cannot be analyzed as prefixed compounds of monosyllables. The only ones in normal use are begin–began–begun and forsake–forsook–forsaken. There is also beseech–besought–besought ; however the form besought is now archaic, the verb normally being conjugated regularly.

List

The following is a list of 204 irregular verbs that are commonly used in standard modern English. It omits many rare, dialectal, and archaic forms, as well as most verbs formed by adding prefixes to basic verbs. It also omits past participle forms that remain in use only adjectivally. For a more complete list, with derivations, see List of English irregular verbs. Further information, including pronunciation, can be found in Wiktionary. The list that follows shows the base, or infinitive form, the past tense and the past participle of the verb.
's book Words and Rules describes how mistakes made by children in learning irregular verbs throw light on the mental processes involved in language acquisition. The fact that young children often attempt to conjugate irregular verbs according to regular patterns indicates that their processing of the language involves the application of rules to produce new forms, in addition to the simple reproduction of forms that they have already heard.
See also.