The twenty to learn first
If you learn nothing else on this page, learn these. They are the twenty irregular verbs that carry ordinary English — between them they appear in more sentences than the remaining 124 put together, and every one of them is irregular in a way you cannot guess.
- be · was · been
- have · had · had
- do · did · done
- go · went · gone
- get · got · got
- make · made · made
- take · took · taken
- come · came · come
- see · saw · seen
- say · said · said
- know · knew · known
- give · gave · given
- find · found · found
- think · thought · thought
- tell · told · told
- become · became · become
- leave · left · left
- feel · felt · felt
- put · put · put
- bring · brought · brought
How to use this list
Start with twenty verbs, not a hundred and forty. The twenty in the strip above this table are the ones that carry ordinary English: they appear in more sentences than every other verb on this page combined, and a learner who owns those twenty can tell a story about yesterday. Everything below them is worth having and none of it is urgent.
Learn all three forms together, out loud, as one item: write, wrote, written. Learning the past simple alone feels faster and costs you twice, because the participle is what the present perfect and the whole passive voice run on — and for irregular verbs it is usually a different word. If you can say the base and not the participle, you have learned half a verb.
Then work down one pattern group at a time. Say the whole group in one breath — bought, brought, caught, fought, sought, taught, thought — and the shared sound does the remembering for you. Seven verbs learned as a chant stick better than seven flashcards, because you are storing one shape rather than seven facts.
Test yourself the hard way round. Cover the first column and read the participles: can you get back to the base form? That direction is the one exams and conversations actually ask for, and it is much harder than reciting forwards, which is why it is worth doing.
Finally, put the sheet somewhere you will see it. Print the PDF, pin the first page above your desk and leave it there for a month. Ten seconds of reading it, forty times, beats one long study session — and unlike the session, it will actually happen.
The eight patterns inside the list
Irregular verbs are not random. They are the wreckage of an older, entirely regular system, and the wreck still has a shape: eight groups, each with a sound the whole group shares. This is what a flat A–Z list cannot show you, and it is the difference between learning a hundred and forty facts and learning eight.
All three forms identical
A – A – A Nothing changes. Most of these already end in /t/ or /d/, which is the sound an -ed ending would have added anyway.
Learn these first. They are the only irregular verbs where knowing the base form is the whole job, and several of them — put, let, cut, cost — are among the commonest verbs in the language.
Watch out: Because the form never changes, the tense has to be carried by something else in the sentence. I put it there is past only because of yesterday, then or the sentence before it.
21 verbs: bet · broadcast · burst · cast · cost · cut · fit · hit · and 13 more below
Past and participle both end -ought or -aught
A – B – B The vowel collapses to /ɔː/ and the ending is /t/, whatever the base looked like: buy, bring and think all arrive at the same rhyme.
Seven verbs, one sound. Say them as a chant — bought, brought, caught, fought, sought, taught, thought — and the group sticks in a way that seven separate flashcards never will.
Watch out: The spelling splits where the sound does not: -aught after c and t (caught, taught), -ought everywhere else. They rhyme regardless.
7 verbs: bring · buy · catch · fight · seek · teach · think
Past and participle end in -t
A – B – B A /t/ is added or an -ed is hardened into one, and the vowel often shortens with it: keep /iː/ becomes kept /e/, lose /uː/ becomes lost /ɒ/.
This is the group that behaves almost regularly — one form covers both past and participle, exactly as -ed does. Learn the vowel change and the rest follows.
Watch out: Several of these take -ed in American English and increasingly in written British English too: learned, burned, spelled, dreamed. Both are given below; neither is a mistake.
25 verbs: bend · build · burn · creep · deal · dream · feel · keep · and 17 more below
Past and participle the same, other changes
A – B – B No single sound rule — but there are sub-families worth seeing: -ing verbs going to /ʌ/ (dig, cling, sting, swing), and -d turning to -old (sell, tell).
The largest group, and the one where the effort pays best: because the second and third forms are identical, learning one verb gives you both the past simple and everything the perfect and passive need.
Watch out: Two of these change meaning with the form. Hung is for pictures, hanged for executions. Found is the past of find, but founded is the past of the separate verb found, meaning to establish.
34 verbs: bleed · breed · cling · dig · feed · find · flee · get · and 26 more below
The i – a – u vowel ladder
A – B – C One vowel, three steps: /ɪ/ in the base, /æ/ in the past, /ʌ/ in the participle. Sing, sang, sung.
The most memorable pattern in English and the one to teach first when you want a learner to believe irregular verbs have patterns at all. Nine verbs follow it exactly.
Watch out: Two are drifting. Shrank and sank are still the standard past forms, but shrunk and sunk are heard in that slot often enough that no examiner will be surprised by either.
9 verbs: begin · drink · ring · shrink · sing · sink · spring · stink · and 1 more below
All three forms different
A – B – C The participles nearly all end in -n or -en, and that ending is the signal: taken, written, broken, chosen, flown.
The hardest group, and the one worth spending real time on, because it contains the verbs stories are told with — go, see, take, give, know, write, break, speak.
Watch out: This is where the classic error lives: using the participle alone (I seen it) or the past after have (I have went). If the -en form is standing on its own, something is missing in front of it.
37 verbs: be · bear · bite · blow · break · choose · do · draw · and 29 more below
Base and participle identical
A – B – A The past steps away and the participle steps back: come, came, come.
Only four verbs, and one of them — come — is everywhere. Worth its own line precisely because it is so small: nothing else in English does this.
Watch out: I have come looks like a present tense and is not. The tense is in have; the participle just happens to be spelled like the base.
4 verbs: become · come · overcome · run
Regular past, irregular participle
A – B(-ed) – C The past is a plain -ed, then the participle takes the old -n ending: showed, but shown.
A small group that most lists file under "irregular" without explaining that only half of each verb is. If you can already form the past, there is exactly one new form to learn.
Watch out: Showed as a participle (I have showed you) is common in speech and still marked wrong in writing. Proved as a participle, by contrast, is fully standard alongside proven.
7 verbs: mow · prove · saw · sew · show · sow · swell
Two of those groups — the identical-form verbs and the -ought family — cover twenty-eight verbs between them and take about ten minutes each. Nothing else on this page is as cheap.
All 144 irregular verbs, A to Z
Alphabetical by default; tap any column heading to sort by that column instead — by past form, by participle, by level or by pattern. The audio button plays all three forms in a row, which is how you will need to say them.
| be | was / were | been | A1 | A – B – CThe only English verb with two past forms: was for I/he/she/it, were for you/we/they. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| bear /beə/ | bore | borne | A1 | A – B – CBorn is the separate participle used only for birth: she was born in May.bear in our word lists |
| become | became | become | A1 | A – B – A |
| begin | began | begun | A1 | A – B – C |
| bend /bend/ | bent | bent | B1 | A – B – Bbend in our word lists |
| bet | bet | bet | — | A – A – A |
| bite | bit | bitten | A1 | A – B – C |
| bleed | bled | bled | — | A – B – B |
| blow | blew | blown | — | A – B – C |
| break /breɪk/ | broke | broken | A2 | A – B – Cbreak in our word lists |
| breed | bred | bred | — | A – B – B |
| bring | brought | brought | A1 | A – B – B |
| broadcast /ˈbrɔːd.kɑːst/ | broadcast | broadcast | A2 | A – A – Abroadcast in our word lists |
| build | built | built | A1 | A – B – B |
| burn | burnt / burned | burnt / burned | A1 | A – B – B |
| burst | burst | burst | A2 | A – A – A |
| buy /baɪ/ | bought | bought | A1 | A – B – Bbuy in our word lists |
| cast /kɑːst/ | cast | cast | B2 | A – A – Acast in our word lists |
| catch /kætʃ/ | caught | caught | B1 | A – B – Bcatch in our word lists |
| choose /tʃuːz/ | chose | chosen | B1 | A – B – CThree different vowels when you say them: /tʃuːz/, /tʃəʊz/, /ˈtʃəʊzən/.choose in our word lists |
| cling | clung | clung | — | A – B – B |
| come | came | come | A1 | A – B – A |
| cost /kɒst/ | cost | cost | A2 | A – A – Acost in our word lists |
| creep /kriːp/ | crept | crept | C1 | A – B – Bcreep in our word lists |
| cut | cut | cut | A1 | A – A – A |
| deal /diːl/ | dealt | dealt | B1 | A – B – BSaid /delt/, not /diːlt/ — the vowel shortens even though the spelling keeps the ea.deal in our word lists |
| dig /dɪɡ/ | dug | dug | B1 | A – B – Bdig in our word lists |
| do | did | done | A1 | A – B – C |
| draw /drɔː/ | drew | drawn | A1 | A – B – Cdraw in our word lists |
| dream /driːm/ | dreamt / dreamed | dreamt / dreamed | B1 | A – B – Bdream in our word lists |
| drink /drɪŋk/ | drank | drunk | A1 | A – B – Cdrink in our word lists |
| drive /draɪv/ | drove | driven | C1 | A – B – Cdrive in our word lists |
| eat /iːt/ | ate | eaten | A1 | A – B – Ceat in our word lists |
| fall /fɔːl/ | fell | fallen | B1 | A – B – Cfall in our word lists |
| feed | fed | fed | — | A – B – B |
| feel | felt | felt | A1 | A – B – B |
| fight | fought | fought | — | A – B – B |
| find | found | found | A1 | A – B – BFounded belongs to a different verb — to found a company or a city. |
| fit /fɪt/ | fit | fit | A2 | A – A – ABritish English uses fitted when a person alters something to fit: the tailor fitted the suit.fit in our word lists |
| flee | fled | fled | B1 | A – B – B |
| fly | flew | flown | A1 | A – B – C |
| forbid | forbade | forbidden | A2 | A – B – C |
| forget /fəˈɡet/ | forgot | forgotten | B1 | A – B – Cforget in our word lists |
| forgive /fəˈɡɪv/ | forgave | forgiven | B1 | A – B – Cforgive in our word lists |
| freeze | froze | frozen | A1 | A – B – C |
| get | got | got / gotten | A1 | A – B – BBritish English keeps got in both slots; American English uses gotten for the participle, except in have got meaning possess. |
| give | gave | given | A1 | A – B – C |
| go /ɡəʊ/ | went | gone | A1 | A – B – CThe past comes from a different verb entirely — Old English wendan, "to wend". That is why it looks like nothing else in the paradigm.go in our word lists |
| grow | grew | grown | A2 | A – B – C |
| hang /hæŋ/ | hung | hung | B1 | A – B – BRegular — hanged — only when it means executed. Pictures and coats are hung.hang in our word lists |
| have | had | had | A1 | A – B – B |
| hear | heard | heard | A1 | A – B – BSpelled with the base inside it, said as /hɜːd/ — it rhymes with bird, not with beard. |
| hide | hid | hidden | — | A – B – C |
| hit /hɪt/ | hit | hit | B1 | A – A – Ahit in our word lists |
| hold /həʊld/ | held | held | B1 | A – B – Bhold in our word lists |
| hurt | hurt | hurt | A1 | A – A – A |
| keep | kept | kept | A1 | A – B – B |
| kneel | knelt / kneeled | knelt / kneeled | — | A – B – B |
| know | knew | known | A1 | A – B – C |
| lay | laid | laid | B1 | A – B – BTakes an object: you lay something down. The verb with no object is lie, further down this table. |
| lead | led | led | A2 | A – B – B |
| lean /liːn/ | leant / leaned | leant / leaned | B1 | A – B – Blean in our word lists |
| leap /liːp/ | leapt / leaped | leapt / leaped | B2 | A – B – Bleap in our word lists |
| learn /lɜːn/ | learnt / learned | learnt / learned | A2 | A – B – Blearn in our word lists |
| leave | left | left | A1 | A – B – B |
| lend /lend/ | lent | lent | A2 | A – B – Blend in our word lists |
| let | let | let | A1 | A – A – A |
| lie | lay | lain | B1 | A – B – CNo object: you lie down. Its past form is lay, which is also the base of the other verb — the single commonest reason this pair is confused. |
| light /laɪt/ | lit / lighted | lit / lighted | A1 | A – B – Blight in our word lists |
| lose /luːz/ | lost | lost | A2 | A – B – Blose in our word lists |
| make | made | made | A1 | A – B – B |
| mean | meant | meant | A1 | A – B – BRhymes with sent, not with seen. |
| meet | met | met | A1 | A – B – B |
| mistake /mɪˈsteɪk/ | mistook | mistaken | A2 | A – B – Cmistake in our word lists |
| mow | mowed | mown / mowed | — | A – B(-ed) – C |
| overcome /ˌəʊ.vəˈkʌm/ | overcame | overcome | B1 | A – B – Aovercome in our word lists |
| pay /peɪ/ | paid | paid | A2 | A – B – BNote the spelling: paid, never payed, outside the nautical sense of letting out a rope.pay in our word lists |
| prove /pruːv/ | proved | proven / proved | B1 | A – B(-ed) – CBoth participles are standard. Proven reads as the more formal of the two and is the usual choice before a noun: a proven method.prove in our word lists |
| put | put | put | A1 | A – A – A |
| quit | quit / quitted | quit / quitted | B1 | A – A – AQuitted survives in formal British writing; quit is what almost everyone says. |
| read /riːd/ | read | read | A1 | A – A – ASpelled identically, said differently: /riːd/ for the base, /red/ for both past forms. The only verb in English whose tense is invisible on paper.read in our word lists |
| rid | rid | rid | A1 | A – A – A |
| ride /raɪd/ | rode | ridden | A1 | A – B – Cride in our word lists |
| ring /rɪŋ/ | rang | rung | A2 | A – B – Cring in our word lists |
| rise /raɪz/ | rose | risen | B1 | A – B – CTakes no object. The verb that does is raise, and it is perfectly regular.rise in our word lists |
| run /rʌn/ | ran | run | A1 | A – B – Arun in our word lists |
| saw | sawed | sawn | — | A – B(-ed) – C |
| say | said | said | A1 | A – B – BSaid /sed/. The ai is a spelling, not a sound. |
| see | saw | seen | A1 | A – B – C |
| seek | sought | sought | — | A – B – B |
| sell | sold | sold | A1 | A – B – B |
| send | sent | sent | A1 | A – B – B |
| set | set | set | A1 | A – A – A |
| sew | sewed | sewn / sewed | — | A – B(-ed) – C |
| shake /ʃeɪk/ | shook | shaken | B1 | A – B – Cshake in our word lists |
| shed | shed | shed | A2 | A – A – A |
| shine | shone | shone | A2 | A – B – BRegular — shined — when it means polished: he shined his shoes. |
| shoot | shot | shot | B2 | A – B – B |
| show | showed | shown / showed | A1 | A – B(-ed) – C |
| shrink | shrank / shrunk | shrunk | — | A – B – C |
| shut | shut | shut | A1 | A – A – A |
| sing /sɪŋ/ | sang | sung | A1 | A – B – Csing in our word lists |
| sink /sɪŋk/ | sank / sunk | sunk | A2 | A – B – Csink in our word lists |
| sit | sat | sat | A1 | A – B – B |
| sleep /sliːp/ | slept | slept | A1 | A – B – Bsleep in our word lists |
| slide /slaɪd/ | slid | slid | B1 | A – B – Bslide in our word lists |
| smell | smelt / smelled | smelt / smelled | — | A – B – B |
| sow | sowed | sown / sowed | — | A – B(-ed) – C |
| speak | spoke | spoken | A1 | A – B – C |
| spell | spelt / spelled | spelt / spelled | A2 | A – B – B |
| spend /spend/ | spent | spent | A2 | A – B – Bspend in our word lists |
| spill /spɪl/ | spilt / spilled | spilt / spilled | B1 | A – B – Bspill in our word lists |
| spin /spɪn/ | spun | spun | B1 | A – B – Bspin in our word lists |
| split /splɪt/ | split | split | B1 | A – A – Asplit in our word lists |
| spoil | spoilt / spoiled | spoilt / spoiled | — | A – B – B |
| spread /spred/ | spread | spread | B1 | A – A – Aspread in our word lists |
| spring | sprang / sprung | sprung | — | A – B – C |
| stand | stood | stood | A2 | A – B – B |
| steal /stiːl/ | stole | stolen | B1 | A – B – Csteal in our word lists |
| stick /stɪk/ | stuck | stuck | B1 | A – B – Bstick in our word lists |
| sting | stung | stung | — | A – B – B |
| stink | stank / stunk | stunk | — | A – B – C |
| strike | struck | struck | — | A – B – B |
| swear | swore | sworn | — | A – B – C |
| sweep | swept | swept | — | A – B – B |
| swell | swelled | swollen / swelled | — | A – B(-ed) – C |
| swim /swɪm/ | swam | swum | A1 | A – B – Cswim in our word lists |
| swing | swung | swung | — | A – B – B |
| take | took | taken | A1 | A – B – C |
| teach /tiːtʃ/ | taught | taught | A2 | A – B – Bteach in our word lists |
| tear /teə/ | tore | torn | B1 | A – B – CThe verb is /teə/ and rhymes with air. The noun for what you cry is /tɪə/ and rhymes with ear.tear in our word lists |
| tell | told | told | A1 | A – B – B |
| think /θɪŋk/ | thought | thought | B1 | A – B – Bthink in our word lists |
| throw /θrəʊ/ | threw | thrown | B1 | A – B – Cthrow in our word lists |
| thrust | thrust | thrust | — | A – A – A |
| understand /ˌʌn.dəˈstænd/ | understood | understood | B1 | A – B – Bunderstand in our word lists |
| upset /ʌpˈset/ | upset | upset | A2 | A – A – Aupset in our word lists |
| wake /weɪk/ | woke | woken | A1 | A – B – Cwake in our word lists |
| wear /weə/ | wore | worn | A2 | A – B – Cwear in our word lists |
| weep /wiːp/ | wept | wept | B1 | A – B – Bweep in our word lists |
| win /wɪn/ | won | won | A2 | A – B – BSaid /wʌn/ — it sounds exactly like one.win in our word lists |
| wind /wɪnd/ | wound | wound | A1 | A – B – BThe verb is /waɪnd/ and its past is /waʊnd/. The noun wound (an injury) is /wuːnd/ and unrelated.wind in our word lists |
| withdraw /wɪðˈdrɔː/ | withdrew | withdrawn | B1 | A – B – Cwithdraw in our word lists |
| write /raɪt/ | wrote | written | A1 | A – B – Cwrite in our word lists |
Sorting is done in the browser and changes nothing but the order — every row above is in the page itself, so the list works with JavaScript switched off and prints in full.
V1, V2, V3 — what the three columns are for
Course books label the forms V1, V2 and V3, and the labels are worth knowing because half the exercises you will meet use them. V1 is the base form: the dictionary entry, the form after to, after a modal, and after did in a question. V2 is the past simple, used alone for finished actions with a time that is over. V3 is the past participle, which never stands on its own — it needs have in front of it for the perfect tenses, or be for the passive.
For regular verbs V2 and V3 are the same word, which is exactly why irregular verbs cause trouble: about half of them keep that convenience and half do not. I bought and I have bought use one form; I took and I have taken use two. The pattern column tells you which kind of verb you are looking at before you have to remember the forms.
The two classic errors both come from mixing the columns. Using V3 alone — I seen it — leaves the sentence with no tense; using V2 after have — I have went — puts a finished-past form where the perfect needs a participle. If you can hear which slot you are filling, the forms sort themselves out.
What the level column means
The CEFR tag on each row is not a claim about the verb in general — it is where this site introduces it. 118 of the 144 verbs here appear in our vocabulary lists or in the grammar lessons, and the tag is taken from wherever they first turn up, so an A1 tag means a complete beginner meets that verb in our own material.
The remaining 26 rows carry no tag, and that gap is deliberate rather than unfinished. Those verbs — bleed, thrust, sow and their neighbours — are not taught anywhere on this site yet. They are on the list because a reference table that quietly dropped them would be lying about being complete, and they are untagged because inventing a level for them would be worse than admitting we have not got there.