IRREGULAR VERBS

English has many irregular verbs in the past tense. We don’t use –ed for irregular verbs. We make
the change in the base form:

drive - drove come - came

sleep - slept eat - ate

In this list of irregular verb forms, the base form is followed by the past tense form. The list shows
the different kinds of changes. For an alphabetical list of irregular verb forms, see the appendix of
your English book.

A. Verbs with no change:

beat – beat hit – hit put - put

cost – cost hurt – hurt quit - quit
cut - cut let – let

B. Base form of verbs ending in d which have a t for the past:

build - built send - sent spend - spent

lend – lent

C. Verbs with vowel changes:

begin – began ring – rang swim – swam

drink - drank sing – sang

break - broke freeze – froze speak – spoke

choose – chose steal – stole wake – woke

drive – drove rise – rose write – wrote

ride - rode

blow – blew fly – flew know – knew

draw – drew grow – grew throw - threw

tear – tore wear – wore

bite – bit hide – hid

 take – took mistake – mistook

hang – hung win – won

bleed – bled leave-left meet - met

feed – fed lead - led
read – read *

feel – felt lose – lost

keep – kept mean – meant sleep – slept

bring – brought catch – caught

buy – bought fight – fought teach – taught
think – thought

find – found

pay – paid say – said**

sell – sold tell – told

(be)come – (be)came give gave

see- saw

eat – ate fall – fell

sit – sat

get - got run - ran

(under)stand – (under)stood

D. Miscellaneous changes:

be – was/were go – went hear – heard

do - did Have - had make - made

**
The past form of read is pronounced like the color red
** Said rhymes with bed