List of Verbs: 500 Verbs A to Z in English

Every English verb has three core forms: the base form, the simple past and the past participle. Regular verbs add -ed for both past forms, as in walk, walked, walked, while irregular verbs change in ways that speakers have to memorize, such as go, went, gone and write, wrote, written. This list of verbs gives the three forms of each verb from A to Z, and those forms are enough to build a sentence in any tense. Every other verb form is made from them with a helping verb or an ending.

List of Verbs A to Z in English

This English verbs list runs from A to Z and gives the base form, the simple past, the past participle and a regular or irregular label for each verb. It is a base verb list for everyday reading and writing, not a list of all verbs in the language. Each row also works as a list of verbs and past participles and as a verb forms list.

List of Verbs Starting With A

List of Verbs Starting With B

List of Verbs Starting With C

List of Verbs Starting With D

List of Verbs Starting With E

List of Verbs Starting With F

List of Verbs Starting With G

List of Verbs Starting With H

List of Verbs Starting With I

List of Verbs Starting With J

List of Verbs Starting With K

List of Verbs Starting With L

List of Verbs Starting With M

List of Verbs Starting With N

List of Verbs Starting With O

List of Verbs Starting With P

List of Verbs Starting With Q

List of Verbs Starting With R

List of Verbs Starting With S

List of Verbs Starting With T

List of Verbs Starting With U

List of Verbs Starting With V

List of Verbs Starting With W

List of Verbs Starting With Y

List of Verbs Starting With Z

Spelling and form variants: American spellings are used throughout, and several verbs carry a second accepted form or a spelling that needs care.

• Get: American English uses gotten as the past participle (it has gotten colder), while British English uses got.
• Learn, burn, dream and smell: American English prefers learned, burned, dreamed and smelled. British English also accepts learnt, burnt, dreamt and smelt.
• Prove: Proved and proven are both accepted as the past participle, and only proven appears before a noun (a proven method).
• Shine: Shone is the past form when the verb has no object (the sun shone), and shined is the past form when it has one (she shined the shoes).
• Hang: Hung is the past form for objects (she hung the coat), and hanged is the past form for execution.
• Lie and lay: Lie (to recline) has the past form lay and the participle lain, while lay (to put down) has the past form and participle laid.
• Read: All three forms are spelled read, and the two past forms are pronounced like red.
• Be: The simple past is was after I, he, she and it, and were after you, we and they.

List of Most Common Verbs in English

Sixteen of the 24 most frequent main verbs in English are irregular. The ranking comes from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), a Brigham Young University corpus, with the six modals in the first 30 verbs left out and covered under helping and modal verbs.

The eight regular verbs in the group are want, look, use, work, call, try, ask and need. The other sixteen are irregular.

Verb Types List

A verb type describes what a verb does in a sentence. The ten main types, with sample verbs for each, are shown here.

List of Regular Verbs

A regular verb forms its simple past and past participle with -ed or -d, and the spelling of the base form decides how the ending is added.

Verbs that add -d after a final e (121 verbs):

Verbs that change y to -ied after a consonant (25 verbs):

Verbs that double the final consonant before -ed (22 verbs):

Verbs that add -ed (201 verbs):

List of Irregular Verbs

An irregular verb forms its simple past or its past participle without the -ed ending. Irregular verbs fall into four groups, based on how the three forms relate.

All three forms match (16 verbs):

The base form and the past participle match (4 verbs):

The simple past and the past participle match (58 verbs):

All three forms differ (53 verbs):

List of Linking Verbs

A linking verb joins the subject of a sentence to a word or phrase that describes or renames it. Linking verbs express a state, a change of state or a sense impression.

List of Helping and Modal Verbs

A helping verb, also called an auxiliary verb, combines with a main verb to form a tense, a question, a negative or a passive. The primary helping verbs are be, have and do.

English has nine central modal verbs, which express ability, possibility, permission, advice, obligation and prediction.

Semi-modals express similar meanings.

List of Action Verbs

Action verbs, also called dynamic verbs, describe something that happens or is done, whether movement, making, speech, thought, routine or exchange.

List of Stative Verbs

Stative verbs describe a state that exists instead of an action that happens, and they do not take the progressive form.

List of Transitive and Intransitive Verbs

A transitive verb needs an object to complete its meaning, and an intransitive verb needs none. Every verb in this list of verbs falls into one group or both.

Lay is transitive (lay the book on the desk), and lie is intransitive (lie on the sofa).

List of Verbs Followed by Gerunds or Infinitives

A verb that takes a second verb requires a specific form of it: a gerund (the -ing form), a to-infinitive, or either.

• Stop: He stopped smoking means he quit the habit, and he stopped to smoke means he paused in order to smoke.
• Remember: I remembered locking the door recalls a past action, and I remembered to lock the door means the task was not forgotten.
• Try: She tried adding salt describes an experiment, and she tried to add salt describes an attempt.
• Let and make: She let him go and they made us wait take the base form without to.

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