irregular verb
Grammar's rule-breaker
An irregular verb is one whose past tense and past participle aren't formed by adding -ed.
English has hundreds: go/went/gone, see/saw/seen, be/was/been.
These tend to be among the most frequently used verbs in the language, which is why their irregularities persist—speakers encounter them often enough to memorize their forms rather than regularizing them.
I-verb for existence
Word form alteration
- morphologyStudy of structural forms
- past tenseVerb form for before
- past participleCompleted action form
- conjugationVerb form variation system
tense · aspect · auxiliary · modal · paradigm · ablaut · stem · infinitive
Vowel gradation in morphology
- reduplicationMorphological doubling process
- syncretismFusion of different beliefs
- dialectalOf regional speech patterns
- archaicBelonging to earlier times
Germanic · Indo-European · historical · etymology · analogy · regularization · leveling · back-formation
Departure from the expected
- nonstandardDeparting from established norms
- unpredictableCannot be anticipated
- idiosyncraticDistinctively individual in nature
- memorizationCommitting information to recall
rote learning · exception · deviation · outlier · quirk · peculiarity · rule-breaking · inconsistency
Fix in mind
- drillHole-boring device
- flashcardLearning aid with prompt and answer
- practiceRepeated work toward mastery
- ESLLanguage instruction abbreviation
second language · acquisition · native speaker · frequency · common · challenge · mistake · error
am
I-verb for existence
were · been · go · went · gone · do · did · done · have · had
inflection
Word form alteration
- morphologyStudy of structural forms
- past tenseVerb form for before
- past participleCompleted action form
conjugation · tense · aspect · auxiliary · modal · paradigm · ablaut · stem · infinitive · finite
ablaut
Vowel gradation in morphology
- reduplicationMorphological doubling process
- syncretismFusion of different beliefs
- dialectalOf regional speech patterns
archaic · Germanic · Indo-European · historical · etymology · analogy · regularization · leveling · back-formation
anomaly
Departure from the expected
- nonstandardDeparting from established norms
- unpredictableCannot be anticipated
- idiosyncraticDistinctively individual in nature
memorization · rote learning · exception · deviation · outlier · quirk · peculiarity · rule-breaking · inconsistency
memorize
Fix in mind
- drillHole-boring device
- flashcardLearning aid with prompt and answer
- practiceRepeated work toward mastery
ESL · second language · acquisition · native speaker · frequency · common · challenge · mistake · error · overgeneralization
- grammar termsnoun, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition
- estarestoy, conjugation, present tense, past tense, preterite
- Latin verbssum, est, audio, lego, video
- language termsgrammar, word, vocabulary, syntax, synonym
- grammardeclension, pronouns, adjectives, conjugation, nouns
- parts of speechnoun, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition