Modern English still has remnants of formerly irregular verbs in other parts of speech. There are also many thousands of archaic, non-standard and dialect variants. This list only contains verb forms which are listed in the major dictionaries as being standard usage in modern English.

English irregular verbs are now a closed group, which means that newly formed verbs are always regular and do not adopt any of the irregular patterns. build, bend, send), stem changes (whether it is a vowel, such as in sit, win or hold, or a consonant, such as in teach and seek, that changes), or adding the suffix to the past participle form (e.g.

The preterite and past participle forms of irregular verbs follow certain patterns. He burnt his finger.), and in American English, the regular form is associated with the literal sense of a verb, while the irregular form with a figurative one. It is also worth noting that the irregular form tends to indicate duration, whereas the regular form often describes a short-term action ( The fire burned for weeks. Australian, New Zealand and South African English tend to follow the British practice, while Canadian English often sides with the American usage. spilled), American English normally uses the regular form, while British English tends to favor the irregular. Sometimes the usage depends on the dialect. In the table, the preferred or more common usage is generally listed first, though for some words the usage is nearly equal for the two choices. In some cases, there are two or more possibilities for a given form. Information about the development of these verbs generally can be found at English irregular verbs details of the etymology and usage of specific verbs can be found by consulting Wiktionary. The right-hand column notes whether the verb is weak or strong and whether it belongs to a subclass, and links to descriptions elsewhere.

In English, these are used as verbs, adjectives, and nouns.) In the case of modal verbs the present and preterite forms are listed, since these are the only forms that exist with the present form identical for all persons. (The present participle and gerund forms of verbs, ending in -ing, are always regular. If there are irregular present tense forms (see below), these are given in parentheses after the infinitive. This is followed by the simple past tense ( preterite), and then the past participle. This is a list of irregular verbs in the English language.įor each verb listed, the citation form (the bare infinitive) is given first, with a link to the relevant Wiktionary entry. For details about the types and origin of irregular verbs in English, see English irregular verbs.

Irregular verbs present and past tense