English irregular verbs: a table and how to remember them
Irregular verbs are the ones whose forms do not follow the "add -ed" rule: go turns into went, not "goed".
Counts differ from dictionary to dictionary, a little over two hundred forms in most of them, and in real speech irregular verbs turn up at least as often as the regular ones.
A table of the 24 most common
Start with these: they cover most everyday and work phrases. Say the three forms in a row (infinitive, past simple, past participle) as if they were one long word.
| Infinitive | Past Simple | Past Participle |
|---|---|---|
| be | was / were | been |
| have | had | had |
| do | did | done |
| say | said | said |
| go | went | gone |
| get | got | got (gotten in American English) |
| make | made | made |
| know | knew | known |
| think | thought | thought |
| take | took | taken |
| see | saw | seen |
| come | came | come |
| give | gave | given |
| find | found | found |
| tell | told | told |
| become | became | become |
| leave | left | left |
| feel | felt | felt |
| bring | brought | brought |
| begin | began | begun |
| keep | kept | kept |
| write | wrote | written |
| buy | bought | bought |
| speak | spoke | spoken |
Four patterns the forms follow
Spot a pattern and memorising gets easier. Most irregular verbs fall into four groups:
- Vowel change plus a -t or -d ending: keep — kept — kept, sleep — slept — slept, feel — felt — felt.
- Final -d turns into -t: send — sent — sent, bend — bent — bent, lend — lent — lent.
- The vowel changes in the second form, and the third adds -en: write — wrote — written, take — took — taken, give — gave — given.
- All three forms are the same: put — put — put, cut — cut — cut, let — let — let.
Fill the gap: six triplets
In each triplet one form is missing, and it is a different one each time: sometimes the second, sometimes the third, sometimes the infinitive itself. Restore it using the patterns above.
- break → ? → broken
- teach → taught → ?
- ? → chose → chosen
- drink → ? → drunk
- lose → ? → ?
- ? → rode → ridden
Answers: broke (third pattern, vowel change, -en in the third form); taught (second and third forms match, as in buy and bring); choose (third pattern, easy to rebuild the doubled vowel from chose); drank (the classic i, a, u run: drink, drank, drunk); lost, lost (first pattern, vowel plus -t for both forms); ride (the same run as drive, write, rise).
The third and sixth items trip people up most, and tellingly so: rebuilding the second form from the infinitive is easier than the other way round. That is why a form met in reading often goes unrecognised, even when the verb itself feels familiar.
How to lock the forms in so they don't get muddled
Lists on the wall work poorly: the eye slides over them without remembering. It is more reliable to tie a form to your own sentence. Take 5–7 verbs a day, build a short phrase about yourself with each and say it aloud.
In adult groups, irregular verbs are often the first real breakthrough: someone remembers that say turns into said and is suddenly telling a story in the past with confidence. So we introduce them in blocks inside live sentences, not as one long list.
Two traps are common for learners whose first language marks the past on the verb alone. After did, learners put the second form in again out of habit. And the other way round: have pulls the second form instead of the third, because the two sit side by side in memory.
The CEFR sets no list of irregular verbs: it describes what you can do with the language, not which forms you have memorised. What it does describe lines up with the table anyway, because the second form is what you need the moment you tell a story, and the third one only starts to earn its keep once you reach the Present Perfect and the passive. So stumbling on the third column usually means not laziness but a level still under construction. You can see how the levels break down by skill against the CEFR scale.
What people often ask about irregular verbs
Forms stick fastest when you put them to use straight away. The most frequent verbs come in handy the moment you tackle the difference between the Past Simple and the Present Perfect, or the passive voice, where the third form is unavoidable. A structured way to close the whole system is our English grammar course; you will meet the same verbs in live conversation on a spoken English course, and if you are not sure which block to start with, a quick level test will point you to it.