Verbs are words that express an action or a state of being. All English verbs that are not auxiliary verbs have four principal parts: a base form (the infinitive without to), a present participle, a past tense, and a past participle. The principal parts are used to form tenses. All present participles are formed by the addition of -ing to the base form: making, breaking, crying. Grammars usually classify verbs as regular and irregular. Regular verbs form their past tense and past participle by adding the suffix -ed to the base form. Thus we say I walked, I have walked, They plodded, They have plodded, She tried, We had tried, and so on. As these examples show, the spelling of these forms sometimes involves modification of the base form. The rules for spelling the principal parts of regular verbs are discussed under Word Formation.
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Irregular verbs do not follow the -ed pattern of regular verbs. Most change their base form—and often its vowel—to make the past tense and past participle. Here are some examples of irregular verbs showing how varied they can be:
Base Form
Past
Past Participle
bend
bent
bent
weep
wept
wept
think
thought
thought
speak
spoke
spoken
grow
grew
grown
ride
rode
ridden
tear
tore
torn
meet
met
met
find
found
found
stand
stood
stood
begin
began
begun
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Some irregular verbs, like burst, cast, cut, and split, do not change to form the past tense and past participle (He cut the bread. He has cut the bread). A few verbs, like burn and spell, have both regular (burned, spelled) and irregular (burnt, spelt) past tenses and past participles. Some, like mow and saw, have both regular and irregular past participles (sawed, sawn). Since English has so many irregular verbs, you should check your dictionary for the correct principal parts of particular verbs.
