Roughly how many irregular verbs remain in everyday modern English: about 20, about 200, or about 2,000?

About 200 (with a core of around 100 in common use).

School & Learning

Irregular verbs Word Search

This irregular verbs word search hides words like brought, caught, thought to find. Play it free online or print the PDF with the answer key, a handy irregular verbs vocabulary activity.

10 words · 11×11 grid · Medium · Answer key included · Free printable PDF

School & Learning

Show / hide answers

Tap the first and last letter of a word — or use arrow keys and Enter. Dragging works too.

UNDERSTOOD
OVERCAME
WITHDREW
BROUGHT
THOUGHT
FORGAVE
CAUGHT
TAUGHT
FOUGHT
SOUGHT

🎉 Solved — all 10 words found!

True stories

Predicting the past tense

Cambridge, Massachusetts

In 2007, a Harvard team led by Erez Lieberman and Jean-Baptiste Michel did something unusual with grammar: they put it on a clock. Tracking 177 verbs that were irregular in Old English, they found that just 98 stay irregular today, as forms like helped and laughed quietly replaced older ones. Their key discovery, published in the journal Nature, was that the rarer a verb is, the faster it regularizes. A verb used a hundred times less often changes ten times as quickly. Common verbs like be and think are so frequent they will likely never change. The researchers even predicted which verb is next in line to go regular: wed.

A verb sneaks the wrong way

Springfield, Massachusetts

Most English verbs drift toward regular -ed endings over time, but one famous holdout runs against the current. According to Merriam-Webster, whose editors track usage from Springfield, Massachusetts, the verb sneak entered English in the late 1500s with the tidy past tense sneaked. Then, around the late 1800s in the United States, speakers began saying snuck instead, inventing an irregular form where none had existed. Today snuck is everywhere in casual American and Canadian speech, while sneaked survives in formal writing. Lexicographers find it delightful precisely because it reverses the usual story: instead of an old irregular fading away, a brand new one snuck in.

Print this Irregular verbs word search

Did you know?

brought: Brought is the past of bring, while bought is the past of buy. The two are easily confused but never interchangeable.
caught: Caught comes from catch and rhymes with taught and bought. That silent gh marks a sound English speakers stopped making centuries ago.
thought: Thought is the past tense of think, yet the same spelling also names an idea. One word lives two grammatical lives.
taught: Taught is the past of teach and sounds exactly like taut, meaning tight. Only the spelling keeps the two words apart.
fought: Fought is the past of fight, keeping the silent gh that once marked a rough throaty sound English long ago abandoned.
forgave: Forgave is the past of forgive, built from the old prefix for- plus gave. Its participle forgiven adds the fossil -en ending.
overcame: Overcame is the past of overcome, echoing come and came. Oddly, its participle overcome matches the present form exactly, spelled the same.
withdrew: Withdrew is the past of withdraw and hides draw inside it. The banking sense and the retreat sense share one irregular verb.
understood: Understood is the past of understand and even hides the word stood, mirroring how stand becomes stood in the same vowel shift.
sought: Sought is the past of seek, changing its vowel entirely instead of adding -ed. It rhymes neatly with caught and taught.
bought: Bought is the past of buy, while brought is the past of bring. A single letter separates these two commonly confused forms.
forsook: Forsook is the past of forsake, meaning to abandon. Its rare participle forsaken now survives mainly in poetry, hymns, and older writing.
broke: Broke is the simple past; broken is the participle. Say I broke it, but it is broken or it has broken.
chose: Chose is the simple past of choose, with one o. The participle chosen and noun choice share the same old root.
wrote: Wrote keeps a silent w, like write, wrong, and wrap. That w was pronounced in Old English, then fell silent before r.

Trivia

Verbs that show past tense by changing their vowel, like sing-sang and drive-drove, get what two-word name from grammarians?
Strong verbs (the vowel change is called ablaut).
Verbs that form the past tense by adding -ed, like walk-walked, are called what?
Weak (or regular) verbs.
Roughly how many irregular verbs remain in everyday modern English: about 20, about 200, or about 2,000?
About 200 (with a core of around 100 in common use).
Children often say goed or runned before learning the correct forms. What is this self-correcting error called?
Overregularization.
The silent letters in knew, wrote, and gnaw were once spoken aloud in which older form of English?
Old English.

Trivia · 1 / 5

Verbs that show past tense by changing their vowel, like sing-sang and drive-drove, get what two-word name from grammarians?

Strong verbs (the vowel change is called ablaut).

In their words

The half-life of an irregular verb scales as the square root of its usage frequency: a verb that is 100 times less frequent regularizes 10 times as fast.
Lieberman, Michel et al., Nature, 2007

When at last he thinks he has captured a rule, he turns the page and reads, Let the pupil make careful note of the following Exceptions.
Mark Twain, The Awful German Language

Is this irregular verbs word search free to print?

This irregular verbs word search is a free printable puzzle with 10 hidden words in an 11×11 grid. Find words like UNDERSTOOD, OVERCAME, WITHDREW hidden across, down, and diagonally. You can play it right here in your browser — tap the first and last letter of a word — or download it as a printable PDF with the full answer key on page two. It's free for personal and classroom use, so teachers can print copies for a whole class with no sign-up and no account. Word searches like this one are a proven way to build vocabulary, spelling, and word-shape recognition, which is why they're a favourite with ESL learners, elementary classrooms, and anyone who likes a quiet puzzle with their coffee.

Print this Irregular verbs word search