Appendix:English verbs

For detailed information about English verbs, see. This appendix entry provides a simple summary.

Regular verbs in English have four forms:
 * The base form, for example,.
 * The third-person singular (he/she/it) present form, for example,.
 * The present participle (gerund), for example,.
 * The past form, for example,.

Wiktionary entries display these forms in the headword line, for example:
 * listen (third-person singular simple present listens, present participle listening, simple past and past participle listened)

Many irregular verbs distinguish the past tense (simple past or preterite) from the past participle. See Appendix:English irregular verbs for more information about irregular verbs.

Conjugation of regular verbs in English
English regular verbs follow one of the five rules listed in this table:

Example:


 * Infinitive: to walk
 * Present:
 * Singular
 * First person: I walk
 * Second person: you walk (archaic thou walkest or thou walkst)
 * Third person: he/she/it/one walks (archaic walketh)
 * Plural
 * First person: we walk
 * Second person: you walk
 * Third person: they walk
 * Present participle: walking (colloquial walkin' or walkin)
 * Simple past: I, you, etc. walked (archaic or poetic walk'd)
 * Future: I, you, etc. will walk (formal, dated, emphatic I, you, etc. shall walk)
 * Note: In the first person, the form using "shall" at one time was considered the ordinary form, and the form using "will" was considered emphatic, but this distinction is now lost.
 * Conditional: I, you, etc. would walk (formal, dated, emphatic I, you, etc. should walk)
 * Note: In the first person, the form using "should" at one time was considered the ordinary form, and the form using "would" was considered emphatic, but this distinction is now lost.
 * Past participle: walked
 * Present subjunctive: I, you, etc. walk (especially in U.S. English), I, you, etc. should walk (especially in British English)
 * Imperfective subjunctive: I, you, etc. walked
 * Present perfect: I, you, etc. have walked
 * Past perfect: I, you, etc. had walked
 * Future perfect: I, you, etc. will have walked, (formal, dated, emphatic I, you, etc. shall have walked)
 * Conditional perfect: I, you, etc. would have walked, (formal, dated, emphatic I, you, etc. should have walked)
 * Imperative:
 * First-person plural: let's walk
 * Second-person: walk
 * Other: let + noun or pronoun + walk

Perfect tenses
English forms the perfect tenses with a verb phrase made up of the auxiliary verb have plus the past participle of the main verb (e.g., love).

In addition to the regular perfect tenses, English can create other variations with various other auxiliary verbs. The verb phrase in the main clause of the first example could be called a conditional perfect tense:
 * "He would have ridden his bicycle if it had not rained."
 * "She was about to have gone home." (Or "She was going to have gone home.")
 * "They had been going for a swim every Thursday."

Overview of tenses for the verb walk:

Irregular verbs
For irregular verbs, see Appendix:English irregular verbs.

Auxiliaries and modal verbs
The auxiliary verb  plus a following past participle indicates the.
 * I have walked a lot today.

The auxiliary verb plus a following present participle indicates the
 * I am walking right now

Modal verbs (such as, , , etc.) occur only once per verb in most varieties of English. Each has a different meaning and they go before and, in that order.
 * He must have been [past participle] walking [present participle] for ages.