Irregular Verbs List: 200+ Irregular Verbs in English

English has more than 200 irregular verbs — verbs that do not follow the standard pattern of adding "-ed" to form the past tense and past participle. Instead of "walk → walked → walked," irregular verbs change in unpredictable ways: "go → went → gone," "sing → sang → sung," "buy → bought → bought."

Unfortunately, many of the most commonly used verbs in English are irregular. "Be," "have," "do," "go," "say," "get," "make," "know," "think," and "come" — all irregular. There is no shortcut for learning these forms; they must be memorized. But this guide will help by presenting them in an organized, searchable format with patterns that make memorization easier.

What Are Irregular Verbs?

Regular verbs form their past simple and past participle by adding "-ed" to the base form: play → played → played, work → worked → worked. This is the standard, predictable pattern.

Irregular verbs deviate from this pattern in various ways. Some change their vowel (sing → sang → sung). Some change completely (go → went → gone). Some stay the same in all three forms (cut → cut → cut). Some change their past simple but keep the same past participle (come → came → come).

Irregular verbs exist because they have preserved older forms from Old English and other Germanic languages. Regular "-ed" endings were a later development that most verbs adopted, but the most frequently used verbs resisted the change — a phenomenon linguists call "frequency resistance."

Patterns in Irregular Verbs

While irregular verbs do not follow a single rule, many fall into recognizable patterns:

All Three Forms the Same (A-A-A)

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

Past Simple and Past Participle the Same (A-B-B)

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

Vowel Change: i → a → u

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

Past Participle Ends in -n or -en

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

Complete Irregular Verbs List (A–Z)

Common Mistakes with Irregular Verbs

• Lay vs. Lie: "Lie" (recline) → lay → lain. "Lay" (put down) → laid → laid. This is one of the most confused verb pairs in English. See our guide on lay vs. lie.
• Hang: "Hang" (suspend) → hung → hung. "Hang" (execute) → hanged → hanged.
• Adding -ed to irregulars: "I catched the ball" should be "I caught the ball." Children and language learners often overgeneralize the regular pattern.
• Got vs. Gotten: American English uses "gotten" as the past participle of "get" ("I have gotten better"), while British English uses "got" ("I have got better"). Both are correct in their respective dialects.

Tips for Learning Irregular Verbs

• Group by pattern: Learning verbs in pattern groups (sing/sang/sung, ring/rang/rung, drink/drank/drunk) is more efficient than memorizing individually.
• Focus on the most common ones first: Start with the 50 most frequently used irregular verbs before tackling the rarer ones.
• Use them in sentences: Create example sentences for each verb to reinforce the forms in context.
• Read extensively: The more you encounter irregular verbs in natural text, the more automatically you will recall their forms.
• Practice regularly: Review a small set of verbs daily rather than cramming a large list occasionally.

Irregular verbs are a challenging but unavoidable part of mastering English. The good news is that the most common irregular verbs are also the ones you encounter most often, which means regular exposure will reinforce your knowledge naturally. Use this list as a reference, practice the patterns, and before long, the correct forms will come to you instinctively.