Template:en-verb/documentation

Use this template to show the inflection line of an English verb.

This template shows the verb in bold (optionally linking its components) and its key inflections.

Basic parameters
For most regular verbs, no parameters are necessary. Examples of such verbs are:
 * 1)  (opens, opening, opened);
 * , with present third singular in -es (wishes, wishing, wished);
 * , with final -y converted to i before -s and -ed (marries, marrying, married);
 * , with the final consonant doubled before -ing and -ed (flips, flipping, flipped);
 * , with final -e dropped before -ing and -ed (baptizes, baptizing, baptized);
 * , with final -e dropped only before -ed (frees, freeing, freed);
 * , with final -ie converted to -y before -ing (ties, tying, tied).

For example, on the page, simply write:

which produces

Other examples:
 * of type (1) above:, , , ;
 * of type (2) above:, , , ;
 * of type (3) above:, , , ;
 * of type (4) above:, , , ;
 * of type (5) above:, , , ;
 * of type (6) above:, , , ;
 * of type (7) above:, , ,.

Type (4) verbs above only have the final consonant doubled automatically if they consist of a single syllable. Type (4) verbs with more than one syllable should have the parameter  specified. Examples: (refers, referring, referred),  (abets, abetting, abetted),  (handicaps, handicapping, handicapped). Specify these verbs as follows:

Also use  for verbs ending in -s or -z that double the final consonant in all three forms. Examples: (quizzes, quizzing, quizzed),  (nonplusses, nonplussing, nonplussed).

For verbs that are irregular with respect to the above rules, specify the three forms explicitly (-s form, -ing form, and -ed form, respectively). An example is, where the above rules would produce the incorrect -s form stomaches instead of the correct form stomachs:

or equivalently:

Here,  stands for the verb lemma form stomach, and   requests that the regularly derived forms stomaching and stomached be used, respectively.

Another example is :

or equivalently:

Irregular verbs
For irregular (strong) verbs, specify the key forms (third-person present singular, the present participle, the simple past tense, and optionally the past participle):
 * 1) For the verb :
 * or equivalently (because the form doing is regular):
 * 1) For the verb :
 * or equivalently (because the forms sees and seeing are regular):
 * 1) For the verb :
 * or equivalently:
 * or equivalently (because the forms sees and seeing are regular):
 * 1) For the verb :
 * or equivalently:
 * or equivalently:
 * or equivalently:

Some irregular verbs have multiple forms for some inflections. Show additional forms or notes for any inflection:
 * 1) For the verb :
 * or equivalently, simply:
 * 1) For the verb :
 * 1) For the verb :
 * 1) For the verb :

Some irregular verbs are defective. To indicate a missing form, use, as with the modal verb :

which produces

Multiword expressions
By default, a multiword expression is treated just like a single word. This is correct for cases like (belly dances, belly dancing, belly danced), but not for cases like  (logs on, logging on, logged on). Special support is available to make it easier to specify the forms of the latter type of expressions. Use  to indicate that only the first word is conjugated, following the normal rules above. For example, for, write:

which produces

You can similarly use  to get the combined effects of   and , e.g. for , write:

which produces

As in other cases, individual forms can be replaced with  or   to request that this particular form be replaced according to the normal rules for these codes. For example, for the verb, use:

or equivalently

Multiword expressions with irregular verbs
An alternative format can be used to compactly specify the conjugation of irregular verbs in multiword expressions. For example, for the idiom, use the following:

which produces

Here, the verb to be inflected is followed by up to four comma-separated forms inside of angle brackets. These four forms correspond to parameters 1 through 4: respectively the -s form (third person present singular), -ing form (present participle), -ed form (past tense) and -en form (past participle). Any of the four forms can be omitted to have them use the default rules described above, and the fourth form can be omitted if the past participle is the same as the past tense. For example, for, use the following:

Here, the fourth form is omitted because the past participle is the same as the past tense.

Links can be inserted into the text outside of angle brackets. For example, for, use the following:

This will cause the terms see, forest and for to be linked normally in the headword, but trees to be linked to the singular form tree, and the not linked at all.

If no links are included in 1, all words will be linked individually, just as for. To override this behavior, include links around only the terms to be linked, or use head to override the headword.

Multiple sets of angle brackets can be used if more than one verb in the expression inflects. For example, for, use:

which produces

Here, no forms are specified inside of the first set of angle brackets (because all are defaulted), and  is specified inside of the second set of angle brackets, just as it would be required for  alone.

Within angle brackets, you can specify multiple alternatives for a given form by separating them with a colon. After a given form, you can attach a qualifier in brackets, i.e. . An example that uses both is  (or any other expression involving ):

which produces

The past participle of is got in the UK but gotten in the US, as indicated.

Another example using colon-separated alternatives is :

which produces

Here, the past tense and past participle of is either regular smelled (specified using an empty form, which defaults to the regular -ed form) or irregular smelt. head is explicitly used so that is linked as a single expression rather than separately linked as two words. Note how the alternative forms smelled and smelt are "distributed" across the past tense woke and past participle woken, producing two past tense variants and two past participle variants.

In some cases, the entire expression can be conjugated in more than one way. For example, in the expression, either each verb can conjugate individually (rocking and rolling) or the expression can be conjugated as a unit (rock and rolling). To express this, specify the two variants as comma-separated and surrounded by double parentheses, as follows:

which produces

Finally, it is also possible to use the angle-bracket format with expressions such as, which have a verb in them that must always be listed in a finite tense. It is simply necessary to be careful in specifying the forms. As an example:

which produces

Here, we cannot default any of the forms of sows (which would wrongly produce sowses, sowsed, etc.), and we use alternants to express the fact that the past tense can be either reaped what one sowed or reaped what one had sown (and similarly for the past participle). Similarly for :

which produces

All parameters
There are two basic parameter formats. The newer format uses only 1, specifying verb forms in angle brackets. This is documented in the previous section. (Technically, the named parameters below can be used even with this format, and override forms specified in 1, but this is not necessary or recommended.)

The other, older format, uses distinct parameters to specify each form:
 * 1, pres_3sg2, pres_3sg3, ...
 * third-person present singular form(s)


 * pres_3sg_qual, pres_3sg2_qual, pres_3sg3_qual, ...
 * corresponding third-person present singular form qualifiers


 * 2, pres_ptc2, pres_ptc3, ...
 * present participle form(s)


 * pres_ptc_qual, pres_ptc2_qual, pres_ptc3_qual, ...
 * corresponding present participle form qualifiers


 * 3, past2, past3, ...
 * simple past tense form(s)


 * past_qual, past2_qual, past3_qual, ...
 * corresponding simple past tense form qualifiers


 * 4, past_ptc2, past_ptc3, ...
 * past participle form(s), if different from the past tense


 * past_ptc_qual, past_ptc2_qual, past_ptc3_qual, ...
 * corresponding past participle form qualifiers

NOTE: Only specify past participle forms if different from the past tense. If no past participle forms are given, or all forms given are the same as the past tense forms, only the past tense forms are displayed, identified as simple past and past participle; otherwise, the simple past forms and past participle forms are displayed separately.

There are no parameters for archaic forms, such as hast or hath (of ), dost or doth (of ), or art, wast, wert (of ). These forms can be noted in usage notes if needed, but should not be included in the headword forms.

The following parameters are additionally supported on all English headword templates, including en-verb:
 * head, head2, ...
 * Override the headword display; used to add links to individual words in a multiword term.


 * id
 * Sense ID for linking to this headword. See senseid for more information.


 * 1, 1, 1, 1
 * Control how multiword terms are linked. See Module:en-headword/documentation for more information.


 * 1
 * Prevent terms beginning with a hyphen from being interpreted as suffixes. See Module:en-headword/documentation for more information.


 * 1
 * Prevent multiword terms (those with spaces or with hyphens in the middle) from being added to Category:English multiword terms.


 * pagename
 * Override the page name used to compute default values of various sorts. Useful when testing, for documentation pages, etc.


 * sort
 * Sort key. Rarely needs to be specified, as it is normally automatically generated.

Exact rules
For reference, the exact rules used to generate regular verb forms are as follows:
 * For the -s form, use the following rules:
 * If the verb ends in -s, -z, -x, -ch or -sh, add -es.
 * If the verb ends in consonant + -y, drop the -y and add -ies.
 * Otherwise, just add -s.
 * For the -ed form, use the following rules:
 * If the verb ends in -e, add -d.
 * If the verb ends in consonant + -y, drop the -y and add -ied.
 * If the verb is of the form C*VC, i.e. any number of consonants + vowel + single consonant (unless the final consonant is -w, -x, -y or -h), double the final consonant and add -ed.
 * Otherwise, just add -ed.
 * For the -ing form, use the following rules:
 * If the verb ends in -ue, drop the -e and add -ing.
 * If the verb ends in -ie, drop the -ie and add -ying.
 * If the verb ends in a vowel + one or more consonants + -e, drop the -e and add -ing.
 * If the verb is of the form C*VC, i.e. any number of consonants + vowel + single consonant (unless the final consonant is -w, -x, -y or -h), double the final consonant and add -ing.
 * Otherwise, just add -ing.

Autosplitting
en-verb, as with all English headword-line templates, implements an intelligent, customized algorithm for automatically splitting and linking the components of a multiword term. See Module:en-headword/documentation for more information.

Suffix handling
en-verb, as with all English headword-line templates, will normally interpret a term beginning with a hyphen as a suffix and handle it specially. See Module:en-headword/documentation for more information.

Link modifications
en-verb, as with all English headword-line templates, has a special mechanism for overriding the default linking behavior of individual terms in a multiword expression without having to repeat the entire expression. See Module:en-headword/documentation for more information.