What are irregular verbs?
Most English verbs form the past simple and the past participle by adding -ed: walk β walked β walked. Irregular verbs do not follow that rule: go β went β gone, buy β bought β bought, put β put β put. There are only about 200 of them in everyday use, but they include the most common verbs in the language.
That is why they matter so much. Be, have, do, say, get, make, go, know, take and see are all irregular, and in stories, which are mostly told in the past tense, their past forms appear on almost every page.
Past simple and past participle
The past simple (also called V2) is used on its own for finished actions: I wrote a letter yesterday. The past participle (V3) is used with have for the present perfect (I have written), with had for the past perfect (I had written) and with be for the passive (The letter was written).
| Form | Example with "write" | Used in |
|---|---|---|
| Base (V1) | write | present, infinitive, imperative |
| Past simple (V2) | wrote | past simple: She wrote two books. |
| Past participle (V3) | written | perfect tenses and passive: It has been written. |
Learn them by pattern
Irregular verbs are easier to learn in groups that change in the same way. The list above can be filtered by these patterns.
| Pattern | What happens | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| A-A-A | All three forms are the same | cut β cut β cut, put, set, let, hit, cost |
| A-B-B | Past simple and participle are the same | buy β bought β bought, think, keep, find, tell |
| A-B-A | Participle is the same as the base | come β came β come, run, become, overcome |
| A-B-C | All three forms are different | go β went β gone, see, take, write, begin |
| A-A-B | Past is the same as the base | beat β beat β beaten |
Inside the groups there are smaller families: sing β sang β sung, ring β rang β rung, drink β drank β drunk, swim β swam β swum; think β thought, bring β brought, buy β bought, fight β fought.
British and American forms
- learnt / learned, dreamt / dreamed, burnt / burned, spelt / spelled, smelt / smelled, spilt / spilled, spoilt / spoiled: both forms are correct. The -t form is more common in British English; American English prefers -ed.
- got / gotten: the past participle of get is got in British English and usually gotten in American English (I've gotten better).
- dived / dove: dove is American.
- proved / proven: both are used as the past participle; proven is more common as an adjective (a proven method).
The test on this page accepts both forms wherever both are listed.
Verbs that are easy to confuse
- lie β lay β lain (to be in a flat position) and lay β laid β laid (to put something down). Lie meaning "say something untrue" is regular: lie β lied β lied.
- rise β rose β risen (to go up, no object) vs. raise β raised β raised (to lift something, regular).
- fall β fell β fallen vs. feel β felt β felt: fell is the past of fall, not of feel.
- find β found β found vs. found β founded β founded (to establish), a regular verb of its own.
- hang β hung β hung for things, but hanged for executions.
How to learn irregular verbs
- Start with the 25 most common verbs in the list. They cover most of the irregular forms you will meet.
- Learn them in pattern groups rather than alphabetically.
- Test yourself with the typing test above: writing the forms is harder, and more effective, than recognising them.
- Read stories. Fiction is told in the past tense, so you see went, said, thought and knew constantly. In the Okuzeka reader you can tap any form you don't recognise to see what it means in that sentence.
- Come back to the test every few days with a larger set (50, 100, then all 164).
