English Irregular Verbs List

An irregular verb is a verb that does not form its past simple and past participle by adding -ed to the base form. Instead, it changes in an unpredictable way (go/went/gone) or stays exactly the same (cut/cut/cut). English has around 150-200 irregular verbs in common use.

Estimates vary, but roughly 150-200 irregular verbs are in everyday use. The 50 most frequent — be, have, do, go, say, get, make, know, think, take — cover the vast majority of the irregular verbs you will actually encounter in speech and writing.

Most irregular verbs fall into one of four broad groups: no-change verbs where all three forms are identical (cut-cut-cut), vowel-change verbs with an internal vowel shift (sing-sang-sung), same-past-participle verbs where the past simple and participle match but differ from the base (buy-bought-bought), and completely irregular verbs where all three forms differ (go-went-gone).

Irregular verbs are survivals of older Germanic verb patterns, particularly a vowel-shifting system called ablaut (seen in sing/sang/sung). As English evolved, the regular -ed ending became the default for new verbs, but the oldest, most frequently used verbs kept their historic forms.

Yes — learn them in groups by shared pattern rather than as a random list. Studying sing-sang-sung alongside ring-rang-rung and swim-swam-swum, for example, teaches you a reusable pattern instead of three unrelated facts. Practising with real sentences also helps far more than memorising isolated word triples.

Yes. Correct use of irregular past tenses and participles is assessed directly in the Grammatical Range and Accuracy criterion of IELTS Speaking and Writing, and in equivalent criteria for Cambridge English exams. Errors like 'goed' instead of 'went' are highly noticeable to examiners.

The past simple is used alone to describe a finished action in the past ('I went home'). The past participle is used with an auxiliary verb to form perfect tenses ('I have gone home') or the passive voice ('The work was done'). For many irregular verbs these two forms are different, which is why they must be learned separately.

Mostly, but not always. American English often accepts a regular alternative where British English keeps only the irregular form, for example learned/learnt, burned/burnt, and dreamed/dreamt. The core irregular verbs like go, be, have, and do are identical in both varieties.

LexFizz's Flash Cards and Flip Tiles exercises are designed for exactly this kind of drilling — you can test yourself on base, past, and participle forms with spaced repetition. Grouping your practice by the four patterns on this page (no-change, vowel-change, same-past-participle, completely irregular) makes each session more efficient.

No. Start with the most frequent 20-30 irregular verbs — be, have, do, go, say, get, make, know, think, take, see, come, want, look, use, find, give, tell, work, call — since these appear constantly in everyday English. Expand outward from there using the pattern groups on this page.