What is a 

verb?

Verbs are a class of words. Verbs tell you what a person is doing in a sentence, or what they are.
They are either action verbs (like Modern English "do" or "make" as in "I do this" or "He makes cars")
or stative verbs (like Modern English "be" or "become" as in "I will be a dog" and "You become
angry")

Verbs have to agree with the subject of the sentence in number (singular when the subject of the
verb is just one, and plural when the subject of the verb is more than one), and person (I, you,
he/she/it). This is sometimes the case even in Modern English, but more so for Old English. An
example of how verbs change to agree for number and person in Modern English is when we add "-s"
to third person singular verb, as in "He sings well"; but we don't add "-s" for anything else, including
third person plural, for example "They sing well".

Look at this example of how an Old English changed depending on the person and number it is used
with, compared with how it is done to a lesser extent in Modern English:

Modern English (go) Old English (gān)

I go we go iċ gā ƿē gāþ

thou goest (archaic)/you alone ye/you all

þu gǣst ġē gāþ
go go

hē/hēo/hit hīe
he/she/it goes/goeth (archaic) they go
gǣþ gāþ

You can see that there are four different ways the word "gān" is changed for different people and
numbers in Old English:
1. First person singular (iċ gā - I go)
2. Second person singular (þū gǣst - you alone go)
3. Third person singular (hē/hēo/hit gǣþ - he/she/it goes)
4. Plural (which is the same for all people) (ƿē/ġē/hīe gāþ - we/you all/they go).
Compare to Modern English, which is simpler and only has two forms:
1. "Goes" (third person singular)
2. "Go" (for everything else)
The infinitives :
Recall how in Modern English, we add -s to a verb when we are talking about he, she, or it: "he
loves", "she sings", "it brings". This form ending in -s in Modern English, is limited, or finite to third
person singular (he, she, it, particular people, places, things, etc). The infinitive form of the verb, is
not specific to any person (so to speak, it is "infinite" - "not finitely limited to any particular person");
however, it is only used in specific situations. Just as in Modern English
In the same way, Old English has two infinitives for each verb: in the case of "to sing" they would
be singan and tō singenne. The choice of which to use essentially follows the same rules as in
Modern English. The plain infinitive is used after modal verbs such as "can" or "may" or "shall". The
"tō" infinitive is used:
 After verbs which require an infinitive but which are not modal, as in hīe ƿilniaþ tō
singenne ("They want to sing").
 After an adjective, as in ic eom gearu tō singenne ("I am ready to sing").
 To indicate purpose, as in þū ārise tō singenne ("You got up to sing").

Verb classes
here are several types of verbs in Old English, more than in Modern English, which has many weak
(love/loved/loved), some strong (sing/sang/sung), and a few irregular verbs (be/was/been). Old
English has four types of weak verbs, typically called Class 1a, Class 1b, Class 2, and Class 3. Strong
verbs are typically arranged in seven classes, according to their vowel-changes (ablaut). All verbs do
have the following in common: the infinitive ends in -an for nearly all verbs (a smaller portion end in -
ian and -rian), the present participle ends in -ende (a smaller portion end in -iende), the present
plural is always -aþ, and the inflected infinitive ends in -enne.
Weak verbs
Weak verbs are often called regular verbs in most English texts, because they have a regular past
tense in -ed, with very few exceptions. In Old English, these verbs were also the majority of verbs,
most often derived from nouns, adjectives, and other verbs. While we can generalize across all
classes, it will be easier to lay them out and allow the reader to see the similarities for themselves.
Weak Class 1 verbs
Class 1 weak verbs are traditionally divided into two subclasses.
In class 1a there are:
 Verbs like fremman, where the stem has a short vowel followed by (in the infinitive) two
consonants.
 Verbs like nerian, where the stem has a short vowel followed by an r followed by (in the
infinitive) an i.
irrigular class 1 verbs

There are some common verbs which inflect like Class 1 weak verbs; indeed, they are, technically,
Class 1 weak verbs. However, there are changes in the stem between the present tense, infinitive,
and present participle forms on the one hand, and the stem in the past and past participle forms on
the other.

it is sufficient to give only two forms of the verb; the rest can be figured out with reference to the
table showing the Class 1 conjugation. In the table we given the infinitive and 1st person singular past
indicative.
These verbs can be divided into three categories:
1. Verbs ending in -ellan, whose preterite becomes -ealde. For example, sellan → sealde.
2. Verbs ending in -eċċan, whose preterite becomes -eahte. For example, streċċan → streahte.
3. Other verbs ending in -ċan or -ngan. These are less predictable, but the vowel usually
changes to o, which is followed by ht: sēċan → sōhte. The vowel in the preterite stem is the
same length as in the present stem, except in the verbs þyncan, and bringan, where
the n disappears and lengthens the preceding vowel: þūhte, brōhte. Ƿyrċan is another
oddity, with the preterite form ƿorhte (also found as ƿrohte, as in modern English wrought).
Weak Class 2 verbs
Class II weak verbs have an infinitive ending in -ian, with the exception of almost all verbs which end
in -rian, which conjugate like the Class 1 weak verb nerian as discussed above.
Weak Class 3 verbs
The third class of weak verbs contains only four verbs, but they are very common ones: habban, "to
have"; libban, "to live"; seċġan, "to say"; and hyċġan, "to think". Each class 3 weak verb behaves
oddly in its own particular way, and so it is probably best just to give each part of each verb.
Strong verbs :
In strong verbs, the vowel in the stem of the verb changes according to person, tense, and mood; this
change is known as ablaut or gradation. Relics of this system survive in Modern English in such
variations as "sing", "sang", "sung" or "write", "wrote", "written".
Stems ending in g
In the 2nd and 3rd person present singular indicative, the same cases in which i-mutation takes
place, if the verb stem ends in g, this usually becomes an h. So for example in the verb belgan ("to be
angry) we have þū bilhst and hē bilhþ.
Stems ending in s, t, or d
Also in the 2nd and 3rd person present singular indicative, certain changes take place to prevent
awkwardness when the dental consonants in the suffix are stuck onto dental consonants at the end
of the stem.
 If the stem of the verb ends in s, then instead of the 2nd person ending in -sst, this becomes -st;
and instead of the 3rd person ending in -sþ, this becomes -st.
Contracted verbs
Where a verb stem originally ended in an h, various things happened. First, the h caused breaking,
turning the vowel into a diphthong; then when the h came between two vowels, it disappeared,
lengthening the vowel it comes after, and then the second vowel disappeared.
So, for example, the Class VI verb lēan ("to blame") would originally have been lahan. Breaking
turned this into leahan; loss of h and lengthening of the vowel would give us lēaan, and loss of the
vowel that came after the h gives us lēan. By contrast, in the 3rd person singular present indicative,
there is no vowel after the h, so only the breaking will occur, and we get hē liehþ.
Irregular verbs
This class consists of four verbs which have little in common except that they are very difficult to
classify. It is usual in any language that the most irregular verbs are also among the most common,
and these are a case in point.
Bēon and ƿesan
There are two verbs in Old English for "to be", ƿesan, which is normally present or past tense,
and bēon, which is normally future tense. The past tense uses forms from ƿesan, conjugating it as a
Class V strong verb.