What Are Irregular Verbs? Know With Examples

Irregular verbs are verbs that don’t follow the usual rules for conjugating past tenses and past participles. They have their own unique tense forms and past participles.
Regular verbs modify their base form to create the simple past tense and past participle forms by adding ‘ed’ or ‘d’ at the end of the verb. On the other hand, irregular verbs change their base form in many different ways.
Most irregular verbs are only irregular in their simple past and past participle forms with the -ed pattern, but some are also irregular in both forms.

List of irregular verbs

These are verbs that have the same or different present and past participles. When conjugated, some irregular verbs don’t change form at all. For example, the past participle of ‘break’ is ‘broken’, and the past participle of ‘cut’ is ‘cut’.

Here is a list of some common irregular verbs with their past and past participle forms.

Irregular verbs with audio

Here is a list of five forms of some irregular verbs with audio.

Have a look.

Frequently Asked Questions about Irregular Verbs in English

What are irregular verbs?

Irregular verbs are verbs that don’t follow the usual rules for conjugating past tenses and past participles. They modify their base form to create the simple past tense and past participle forms in many different ways. For example, the verb ‘be’ has the forms ‘am’, ‘is’, and ‘are’, which are different from the regular verbs.

How many irregular verbs are there in English?

There are nearly two hundred common irregular verbs that are used in everyday English. These verbs don’t follow the usual ‘-ed’ rule for making the past tense and past participle.
While there are so many irregular verbs that we use rarely, including prefixed verbs such as ‘overwrite’. So learning these verbs is very important for fluency.

Give some irregular verb examples.

Some frequently used irregular verbs are:

1. begin – began – begun
2. catch – caught – caught
3. choose – chose – chosen
4. come – came – come
5. cut – cut – cut
6. draw – drew – drawn
7. drink – drank – drunk
8. find – found – found
9. give – gave – given
10. go – went – gone
11. have/has – had – had
12. lose – lost – lost
13. put – put – put
14. ride – rode – ridden
15. see – saw – seen
16. shut – shut – shut
17. sing – sang – sung
18. take – took – taken
19. understand – understood – understood
20. write – wrote – written

Which verb tenses have irregular forms in English?

Irregular verb forms are in the simple present, simple past, and past participles in English. We use past participles in a variety of verb forms, such as present perfect, past perfect, future perfect, past conditional and passive forms.

What is the difference between regular and irregular verbs?

Regular verbs modify their base form to create the simple past tense and past participle forms by adding ‘ed’ or ‘d’ at the end of the verb. On the other hand, irregular verbs change their base form in many different ways.

Related Lessons

1. Use of shall
2. Use of will negative sentences
3.                     questions
4.                 affirmative answers

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