Irregular Verbs List: 200+ Irregular Verbs in English

Not every English verb makes the past tense by tacking on "-ed." A regular verb gives you neat forms such as "open → opened → opened" or "help → helped → helped." An irregular verb does something else: "take → took → taken," "drive → drove → driven," "keep → kept → kept."

That matters because many everyday verbs are irregular. "Be," "have," "do," "go," "say," "get," "make," "know," "think," and "come" all break the regular pattern. You cannot reliably guess every form, so memorization is part of the work. Still, the job gets easier when the verbs are grouped by pattern and kept in a clear list you can return to.

How Irregular Verbs Work

With a regular verb, the past simple and the past participle are usually made by adding "-ed" to the base form: call → called → called, clean → cleaned → cleaned. The pattern is predictable.

Irregular verbs do not use that single pattern. Some change a vowel, as in drink → drank → drunk. Others change almost completely, as in go → went → gone. A few do not change at all, such as cut → cut → cut. Some have a past simple form that differs from the past participle, as in come → came → come.

Many irregular forms survive from older stages of English and related Germanic languages. The "-ed" ending later became the normal pattern for most verbs, but very common verbs often kept their older forms. Linguists describe this tendency as "frequency resistance."

Patterns You Can Spot in Irregular Verbs

Irregular verbs are not governed by one universal rule, but plenty of them cluster into useful groups:

One Form for Base, Past, and Participle (A-A-A)

put/put/put, cut/cut/cut, hit/hit/hit, let/let/let, set/set/set, cost/cost/cost, hurt/hurt/hurt, shut/shut/shut, spread/spread/spread, quit/quit/quit

Past Simple Matches the Past Participle (A-B-B)

think/thought/thought, buy/bought/bought, bring/brought/brought, teach/taught/taught, catch/caught/caught, seek/sought/sought, fight/fought/fought

Vowel Pattern: i → a → u

drink/drank/drunk, sing/sang/sung, swim/swam/swum, ring/rang/rung, begin/began/begun, shrink/shrank/shrunk, sink/sank/sunk

Participles Ending in -n or -en

choose/chose/chosen, break/broke/broken, speak/spoke/spoken, write/wrote/written, freeze/froze/frozen, ride/rode/ridden, drive/drove/driven, take/took/taken, wake/woke/woken, steal/stole/stolen

Irregular Verbs from A to Z

Mistakes to Watch For

• Adding -ed where it does not belong: Say "I caught the ball," not "I catched the ball." This mistake is common because learners apply the regular pattern too widely.
• Got vs. Gotten: In American English, "gotten" is used as a past participle of "get": "She has gotten stronger." British English normally uses "got": "She has got stronger." Each form is correct in its own variety of English.
• Hang: For the meaning "suspend," the forms are hang → hung → hung. For the meaning "execute by hanging," the forms are hang → hanged → hanged.
• Lay vs. Lie: "Lie" meaning "recline" has the forms lie → lay → lain. "Lay" meaning "put down" has the forms lay → laid → laid. This pair causes a lot of confusion; see our full guide to lay and lie.

Practical Ways to Learn Them

• Read often: Seeing irregular verbs in real writing helps the forms start to feel familiar.
• Start with high-frequency verbs: Learn the 50 most common irregular verbs before spending time on rare ones.
• Study them in pattern groups: Sets such as sing/sang/sung, ring/rang/rung, and drink/drank/drunk are easier to remember together.
• Practice a little at a time: A short daily review usually works better than trying to memorize a huge list at once.
• Put each verb into a sentence: Context makes the forms stick better than isolated word lists.

Irregular verbs take effort, but they are not random noise. Many follow smaller patterns, and the most useful ones appear again and again in speech and writing. Keep this list handy, review the groups, and use the verbs in context. Over time, forms like "went," "taken," and "written" will sound natural without much thought.