Rules, Examples And Reference For Learners

When I first started learning about irregular verbs, I remember thinking, “Why can’t English verbs just follow one simple rule?” If you’ve ever had the same thought, you’re not alone. That’s what makes this topic a bit tricky at first—but don’t worry, I’ll walk you through it step by step.

Let’s begin by clearing up one thing: what’s a verb? Simply put, a verb is a word that shows an action, like run, eat, or write. Verbs also help us talk about when something happens—that’s where tense comes in. In English grammar, we use different verb forms to show different times: past, present, and future.

Now, some verbs follow clear, regular patterns. For example, to make the past tense of talk, we just add “-ed”: talked. These are called regular verbs. But English wouldn’t be English without exceptions, right? That’s where irregular verbs come in. Instead of following a rule, their past forms change in unexpected ways—or sometimes don’t change at all.

Regular vs. Irregular Verbs

Let’s take a moment to compare regular and irregular verbs. This is a key part of learning how the uses of English verb forms work.

A regular verb is one that follows a simple rule: to form the simple past and past participle, you just add “-ed” to the base verb. For example:

• walk → walked
• play → played
• want → wanted

That little “-ed” is called a suffix, and it’s what regular verbs rely on to show past actions.

Now let’s look at irregular verbs. These don’t follow the “-ed” rule. Their verb forms change in unique ways, or sometimes they don’t change at all. Here are a few examples:

• begin → began → begun
• go → went → gone
• cut → cut → cut

You’ll notice that irregular verbs like go, do, or eat don’t use the standard pattern, which means you just have to learn them by heart. It might take some practice, but using these verbs in sentences will help it all stick.

Also, keep in mind that in a sentence (linguistics-wise), verbs often work alongside adpositions like “to” or “from,” adjectives, and even grammatical particles (like “not” or “up”). That’s why getting the verb right makes a big difference in how the whole sentence reads.

What Makes a Verb Irregular?

An irregular verb is a verb that doesn’t follow the usual pattern of adding “-ed” in the past. For example, go becomes went, not goed. And eat becomes ate, not eated. These changes don’t follow a single rule, which is why we often use a list of irregular verbs or a table to keep track of them.

Irregular verbs usually have three key forms:

1. Infinitive (base form): eat
2. Simple past: ate
3. Past participle: eaten

You’ll see these verb forms show up in many types of grammatical tense like:

• Simple past: I ate lunch.
• Present perfect: I have eaten lunch.
• Past perfect (pluperfect): I had eaten lunch before you arrived.
• Past progressive: I was eating lunch.

These tenses help us show exactly when an action happened, and that’s what makes learning English grammar so interesting.

Why Are Irregular Verbs So Common in English?

Believe it or not, irregular verbs are some of the oldest words in the English language. They often come from Germanic roots, which explains why we find similarities between English irregular verbs and verbs in the German language. You’ll also spot some overlap with verbs in the Portuguese language, Russian language, and Ukrainian language, though each language has its own grammatical conjugation rules.

The reason some verbs have strange past tense forms is historical. Over time, pronunciation and spelling evolved, but the most common verbs kept their old forms. That’s why we say taught instead of teached and became instead of becomed.

Verbs with Two Past Tense Forms

Now, here’s something even more curious. Some irregular verbs actually have two acceptable past tense forms. For example:

• Dream → dreamed or dreamt
• Learn → learned or learnt
• Spoil → spoiled or spoilt

Both forms are usually correct, though sometimes one is more common depending on where you are. British English tends to prefer dreamt, while American English leans toward dreamed. That’s one of the cool things about the uses of English verb forms—there’s often more than one correct way.

Spotting Patterns in Irregular Verbs

Even though irregular verbs don’t follow a single rule, you’ll start to see patterns if you look closely. Here are a few examples:

• Verbs like sing, ring, and begin follow a vowel change pattern:
  • sing → sang → sung
  • ring → rang → rung
• Verbs like cut, put, and hit don’t change at all:

Seeing verbs in groups like this can make them easier to remember. That’s why an irregular verbs list or a worksheet with practice exercises can be super helpful, especially if you’re a student trying to memorize common irregular verbs.

How to Practice Irregular Verbs

One of the best ways to learn these verbs is to use them in full sentences. Here’s a quick example:

• Simple present: They write every day.
• Simple past: They wrote a poem yesterday.
• Present perfect: They have written three poems this week.

As you can see, changing the form of the verb depending on the grammatical tense is key. You can make your own list or find a good table to practice from. Writing sentences, filling in worksheets, or even creating short stories can help make these forms stick.

Don’t forget the little helpers too—grammatical particles, adverbs, and even adpositions (like “in,” “on,” or “at”) can change the meaning of a sentence. Learning how all these work together will improve your grammar skills over time.

Irregular Verbs – Complete List

Here’s a complete list of irregular verbs to help you learn and recognize them more easily. You’ll see the infinitive, simple past, and past participle form side by side. This way, you can compare how each verb changes. This isn’t the full irregular verbs list, but it includes some of the most common irregular verbs in English.

Infinitive	Simple Past	Past Participle
begin	began	begun
break	broke	broken
bring	brought	brought
choose	chose	chosen
come	came	come
do	did	done
eat	ate	eaten
go	went	gone
know	knew	known
take	took	taken
write	wrote	written

Final Thoughts

Irregular verbs might seem confusing at first, but they’re just part of how the English language has grown over time. If you keep practicing and pay attention to patterns, you’ll get more comfortable with the right form to use. Whether you’re learning for school, teaching someone else, or simply trying to improve your writing, knowing your regular and irregular verbs will help you use the language more clearly and confidently.