What's The Difference Between Regular And Irregular Verbs?

In the context of verbs, we use the term inflection to talk about the process of changing a verb form to show tense, mood, number (i.e. singular or plural), and person (i.e. first person, second person, or third person). This section deals with inflecting verbs to show tenses and participles, and is divided into two main sections:

Regular verbs

Irregular verbs  

Regular verbs

Many English verbs are regular, which means that they form their different tenses according to an established pattern. Such verbs work like this:

Present tense formation

In the present simple tense, the basic form of a regular verb only changes in the 3^rd person singular, as follows:

Most verbs just add -s to the basic form (e.g. take/takes, seem/seems, look/looks).

Verbs that end with a vowel other than e add -es (e.g. go/goes, veto/vetoes, do/does).

Verbs that end with -s, -z, -ch, -sh, and -x add -es (e.g. kiss/kisses, fizz/fizzes, punch/punches, wash/washes, mix/mixes).

If the verb ends in a consonant plus -y, change the y to an i before adding -es (e.g. hurry/hurries, clarify/clarifies). But if the verb ends in a vowel plus -y, just add -s (e.g. play/plays, enjoy/enjoys).

Past tense formation

Forming the past simple tense of regular verbs is mostly straightforward, and you use the same form for the first, second, and third persons, singular and plural:

If the basic form of the verb ends in a consonant or a vowel other than e, add the letters -ed to the end (e.g. seem/seemed, laugh/laughed, look/looked).

For verbs that end in -e, add -d (e.g. love/loved, recede/receded, hope/hoped).

If the verb ends in a consonant plus -y, change the y to an i before adding -ed (e.g. hurry/hurried, clarify/clarified). But if the verb ends in a vowel plus -y, just add -ed (e.g. play/played, enjoy/enjoyed). 

For more detail, see Verb tenses: adding-ed-and-ing.

Forming participles

To form the past participle of regular verbs, follow the same rules as for the past simple tense above. 

To make the present participle of regular verbs:

If the basic form of the verb ends in a consonant or a vowel other than e, add the ending -ing (e.g. laugh/laughing, boo/booing).

If the verb ends in e, drop the e before adding -ing (e.g. love/loving, hope/hoping).

If the basic form ends in y just add -ing (e.g. hurry/hurrying, clarify/clarifying).

For more detail, see Verb tenses: adding-ed-and-ing. 

Irregular verbs

There are many irregular verbs that don’t follow the normal rules. Here are the forms of some of the most common irregular verbs:

Note that sometimes the spelling doesn’t change but the pronunciation does (e.g. read). There are many more irregular verbs in English than those listed here. If you aren’t sure how a verb behaves, it’s best to look it up. All irregular verb forms are given in full at the main dictionary entry.

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