In American English, the regular forms of verbs account for more than 90% of instances, whereas British English has a regular form frequency of 69% according to a 1991 study.

This is the case with the example of catch given above others include wear and string, which were originally weak verbs, but came to be conjugated like the similar-sounding strong verbs bear and swing. In a few cases, however, analogy has operated in the other direction (a verb's irregular forms arose by analogy with existing irregular verbs). Many irregular verbs today have coexisting irregular and regular forms (as with spelt and spelled, dreamt and dreamed, etc.). This is more likely to occur with less common verbs (where the irregular forms are less familiar) hence it is often the more common verbs (such as be, have, take) that tend to remain irregular. The force of analogy tends to reduce the number of irregular verbs over time, as irregular verbs switch to regular conjugation patterns (for instance, the verb chide once had the irregular past tense chid, but this has given way to the regular formation chided). Verbs such as peep, which have similar form but arose after the Vowel Shift, take the regular -ed ending. For example, before the Great Vowel Shift, the verb keep (then pronounced /keːp/, slightly like 'cap', or 'cape' without the / j/ glide) belonged to a group of verbs whose vowel was shortened in the past tense this pattern is preserved in the modern past tense kept (similarly crept, wept, leapt, left). When some grammatical rule became changed or disused, some verbs kept to the old pattern. Most irregular verbs exist as remnants of historical conjugation systems. There are a few exceptions, however, such as the verb catch (derived from Old Northern French cachier), whose irregular forms originated by way of analogy with native verbs such as teach. Nearly all verbs that have been borrowed into the language at a later stage have defaulted to the regular conjugation. Most English irregular verbs are native, derived from verbs that existed in Old English. įor information on the conjugation of regular verbs in English, as well as other points concerning verb usage, see English verbs. Nonetheless, there are also many irregular verbs that follow or partially follow the weak conjugation. The regular verbs, on the other hand, with their preterites and past participles ending in -ed, follow the weak conjugation, which originally involved adding a dental consonant ( -t or -d). In particular, many such verbs derive from Germanic strong verbs, which make many of their inflected forms through vowel gradation, as can be observed in Modern English patterns such as sing–sang–sung.

Irregular verbs in Modern English are typically derived from verbs that followed more regular patterns at a previous stage in the history of the language.

New verbs (including loans from other languages, and nouns employed as verbs) usually follow the regular inflection, unless they are compound formations from an existing irregular verb (such as housesit, from sit). The irregular verbs include many of the most common verbs: the dozen most frequently used English verbs are all irregular. There are a few exceptions: the verb be has irregular forms throughout the present tense the verbs have, do, and say have irregular -s forms and certain defective verbs (such as the modal auxiliaries) lack most inflection. The other inflected parts of the verb-the third person singular present indicative in -s, and the present participle and gerund form in -ing-are formed regularly in most cases. In most cases, the irregularity concerns the past tense (also called preterite) or the past participle. The English language has many irregular verbs, approaching 200 in normal use-and significantly more if prefixed forms are counted.

Past tense of cut