Verbs

Verbs in the English language are a part of speech and typically describe an action, an event, or a state.

While English has many irregular verbs (see a list), for the regular ones the conjugation rules are quite straightforward. Being partially analytic, English regular verbs are not strongly inflected; all tenses, aspects and moods except the simple present and the simple past are periphrastic, formed with auxiliary verbs and modals.

A regular English verb has only one principal part, from which all the forms of the verb can be derived. This is the bare form, and is shown in dictionaries. All other forms of a regular verb can be derived straightforwardly from this, for a total of four forms. For example, the bare form "exist" produces the forms exist, exists, existed, existing. Each of these can be used in a variety of grammatical contexts.

Another class of verbs, strong verbs, have three principal parts. For example:

Part Example

1 infinitive write