Strong verbs

All disused forms or forms rebuilt on the basis of regular sound changes are in bold. If verbs have regular forms as well, the regular forms will not be listed, since this is mainly about the irregular forms.

A few notes in regard to categorization:
 * The system herein is mainly historical; even if a strong verb's forms were influenced to some extent by those of another class of strong verbs, or the strong verb has become weak, the strong verb will still be listed in its original class. The new forms will be listed alongside it.
 * If a verb is of root, the mother tongue is listed. Of course, verbs introduced into English from other tongues are by default weak.
 * If an originally strong verb now has both strong and irregular weak forms, it is listed in the strong verbs section, and the irregular weak forms are listed therein.
 * Nonce formations, unless remarkable, are not included.
 * Verbs may be labeled archaic, dialectal, or obsolete if no longer used in standard speech.

Class 1
In Old English, the forms that a Class 1 verb (e.g., rīdan) were:


 * First and third-person singular past indicative: rād.
 * Plural past indicative: ridon.
 * Past participle: geriden.

The first became rode, and the last two became rid and ridden, respectively. As one can see, the plural past and the past participle shared the same vowel. Hence, we have two ways of forming the past tense:


 * From the past singular, e.g., drove, shone.
 * From the past plural and past participle, e.g., bit, slid.

This twofold way of forming the past tense explains that the surviving forms are not fully consistent. For example, the past tense forms for ride were once rode and rid, and rode was chosen over rid. However, in the case of bite, bit was chosen over bote. It appears that forms from the past singular are preferred.

Most of the original past participle forms have survived in this class. It can be seen that in the past participle forms, the vowel in the infinitive has been shortened, e.g., ride, ridden.

This class is mostly consistent; all the members that still have strong forms are uniform in the infinitive vowel.

Dialectal or obsolete words (with expected past tense and past participle forms):

Notes:


 * From a variant of Old English rīpan comes the Class 5 verb reap.
 * It is unclear why the past tense of strike shifted from stroke to struck; it seems that it was influenced by the Class 3 verbs, but how the analogical process came about is unclear.
 * Shit(e) has shat as an alternative to shit by analogy with the Class 5 verb sit, and shitted as the regularized form. The vowel was originally long (and shite is still used in a few dialects), but most likely from influence of the noun, the vowel was later shortened.
 * Sike, now a dialectal word meaning sigh, gained the irregular weak form sight by analogy with verbs like teach and buy. Sigh is likely a back-formation from sight (which form is now obsolete).
 * The current verb spew once had the same vowel as other members of this class, as it was spīwan in Old English.

Class 2
In Old English, the past singular indicative had ēa, whereas the past participle had o instead. For example, the forms of the verb frēosan were:


 * First and third-person past indicative: frēas.
 * Past participle: gefroren.

In Middle English, the past singular came to have the same vowel as the past participle, whence came froze. Moreover, if the past participle had an r, it was influenced by the consonant in the infinitive, whence came frozen. The old form with r is found in the adjective forlorn, historically the past participle of the obsolete verb forlese meaning forsake.

Dialectal or obsolete words (with expected past tense and past participle forms):

Notes:


 * The past tense and past participle of bid is bid, but in the phrase bid fair, bade and bidden are often used because it has been confused for the Class 5 verb bid.
 * The irregular weak form of cleave is formed by analogy with leave. There is no clear consensus on which form ought to be used.
 * The unrelated verb cleave meaning adhere to is fully regular, on the other hand, e.g., The priest cleaved to his faith, even when his life was in peril.
 * Creep is now an irregular weak verb.
 * Douve had fallen into disuse since it was conflated with the weak verb dive (which originally was a transitive verb meaning dip, immerse).
 * Flee and fly once shared the same past tense and past participle forms, and the two verbs continued to be confused for each other in Middle English. Only later on were they formally differentiated in this aspect. Flee became an irregular weak verb, whereas fly kept its strength.
 * The past tense of fly lacks the same vowel as is in the past participle, which makes it an exception to the usual change in verbs of this class. Perhaps analogy with verbs in Class 7 helped establish flew as the past tense instead of flow.
 * Forbid is not etymologically connected to the Class 5 verb bid (meaning command), but because of the similarity in form and meaning, forbid was later thought to be as a derivative of the Class 5 verb bid and thus became conjugated so.
 * The dialectal verb greet is a merger of two strong verbs, one of Class 2, the other of Class 7. Therefore, the same verb is listed in both classes to show what its original strong forms might have become.
 * Sodden, the archaic past participle of seethe, lives on as an adjective that has diverged from the meaning of seethe, as it now means soaked, saturated instead of boiled.
 * The past participle of the obsolete verb tee (meaning to train) lives on in wanton, wherein the wan is a dead prefix showing deficiency. Thus, wanton literally means untrained, whence the meaning of unrestrained.
 * Lee (Old English lēon), tee (Old English tēon meaning accuse), and thee (Old English þēon) are historically contracted forms of Class 1 verbs (though the Proto-Germanic forebear of þēon was of Class 3 instead), but because the infinitive resembled those of Class 2 verbs, the past tense and past participle were often changed by analogy.

Subclass 1
In Old English, a verb of this subclass (e.g., singan) had the following forms:


 * First and third-person singular past indicative: sang.
 * Plural past indicative: sungon.
 * Past participle: gesungen.

In Middle English, however, for many verbs, the forms began to be mixed up, insofar as the past tense form came to have the same vowel as was in the plural past and the past participle. There was no consistency whether the original past tense form was kept, whence there are two ways of forming the past tense for verbs of this subclass:


 * From the past singular: began, sang, swam.
 * From the past plural and past participle: swung, stung.

In other words, it was once correct to say I swang and I wan, but now one says I swung and I won.

Note that for words ending in nd, phonological changes have beclouded the original pattern. In the Middle English period, the vowel in the infinitive, the past tense, and the past participle were lengthened because the vowel was set before the consonant cluster nd. The plural past and the past participle later became found; the singular form fand had died out. In other words, the past tense form draws its vowel from the plural past and the past participle.

The past participle forms originally ended in -en, but it has been dropped, which leaves the change in vowel as the lone marker of the past participle. Some of the -en forms have become adjectives, e.g., drunken, shrunken, sunken.

Dialectal or obsolete words (with expected past tense and past participle forms):

Notes:


 * Burn (Old English birnan) is the result of metathesis in prehistoric Old English; if it had been passed down to Old English from its Proto-Germanic forebear normally, it would have become brinnan (past tense brann, past participle gebrunnen). The only attested example of the original form is found in onbran (set fire to (past)). Because of the metathesis, it was no longer recognizable as a member of this subclass and came to be conjugated like a Subclass 2 member.
 * The past tense and past participle of climb in Old English were clamb and geclumben, and the vowel in the infinitive was short, whence the verb followed this subclass's pattern fully. But in Middle English, the vowel was lengthened, and the verb was influenced by forms of Subclass 2 verbs and so came to be conjugated like a Subclass 2 verb. In the end, however, climb was regularized.
 * Run was rinnan or irnan (because of metathesis) in Old English, and if it had changed normally, it would have become rin, which would conform fully to the pattern in this subclass.
 * Sling from Old English slingan is etymologically connected to the modern verb sling, which is likely from Old Norse.

Subclass 2
Nearly every verb in this subclass has become regular or has gained regular forms.

Dialectal or obsolete words (with expected past tense and past participle forms):

Notes:


 * The verb burst (Old English berstan) underwent metathesis in Middle English from Old Norse influence, whence the past tense had brast and brost as two of its many variants. However, the verb was later reverted to its original form, and the vowel in the infinitive was later transferred to the past tense and past participle. The past participle ending was later dropped, which left burst to be used for all three functions.
 * The obsolete verb frain is from Old English frignan, which also had byforms because the g often disappeared. One byform was frīnan, which was partly conjugated like a Class 1 verb.
 * Corven and storven became obsolete as past participles. Carven and starven were later formed by analogy with strong verbs that have the same vowel in the infinitive and the past participle, but these forms were, in the end, displaced by the regular forms.
 * Molten is still used as an adjective.

Class 4
In Old English, the infinitive generally had e, the past singular indicative æ, and the past participle o. For example, the forms of the verb teran were:


 * First and third-person singular past indicative: tær.
 * Past participle: getoren.

The past tense forms developed into such forms as tare, brake, and bare, but they became influenced by the vowel in the past participle and so were changed into tore, broke, and bore.

This class had two anomalous verbs in Old English: cuman (come) and niman (the archaic verb nim, meaning take). Regular Class 4 verbs are, on the whole, uniform in their past tense and past participle forms.

Dialectal or obsolete words (with expected past tense and past participle forms):

Notes:


 * The past participle of nim lives on in the adjective numb (the b is unetymological and not pronounced, and the past participle ending -en has been dropped). Of course, the old past participle nomen had the same vowel as in come.
 * Shore is apparently most used in Australian English, other areas preferring sheared as the past tense.

Class 5
In Old English, generally, the infinitive had e or i, the past singular indicative æ, and the past participle e. For example, the forms of the verb etan were:


 * First and third-person singular past indicative: æt.
 * Past participle: geeten.

In Middle English, most of the past tense forms were lengthened, whence the past tense of eat is not at but ate. However, the process was later reversed for sit, as the current past tense is not sate but sat.

The past participle came to have the same vowel as is in the infinitive, whence the vowel in the past participle of eat was lengthened when the vowel in the infinitive had been lengthened. In a few cases, however, the past participle form was replaced by the past tense, and in lain, the past participle ending was added to the new form.

Dialectal or obsolete words (with expected past tense and past participle forms):

Notes:


 * Bid is often conjugated like the Class 2 verb bid (meaning offer) because both verbs have been confused for each other from the similarity in form and meaning.
 * In speak, tread, and weave, the past tense and past participle forms have been changed by analogy with Class 4 verbs. The same process was done to wreak, but the irregular forms are now obsolete.
 * The same process was also done to the obsolete verb queath (the verb lives on in the derivative bequeath), and so the past tense shifted from quath to quoth (which lives on as a literary word). However, bequeath was later regularized.
 * Yet (found only in combination in Old English) and yive have been displaced by get and give from Old Norse.

Class 6
In Old English, the past singular indicative had ō. What is near the original vowel is kept in a few of the surviving past tense forms.

Dialectal or obsolete words (with expected past tense and past participle forms):

Notes:


 * Hove is now used mainly in nautical contexts.
 * Shapen and shaven are still used as adjectives.
 * Swear looks exactly like a Class 4 verb, but in Old English, the past tense was swōr, which matched the past tense forms of other Class 6 verbs. The past participle, oddly enough, was gesworen.
 * The past tense and the past participle of wake (and by extension awake) appear to have been remade by analogy with Class 4 verbs.

Class 7
In Old English, the past tense had ē or ēo, and the past participle had the same vowel as was in the infinitive.

Subclass 1
Dialectal or obsolete words (with expected past tense and past participle forms):

Notes:


 * Blow in the usual meaning of move through air has the same form as the verb blow meaning produce flowers. Etymologically, in Old English, both verbs belonged to Class 7 and shared the same past tense forms.

Subclass 2
Dialectal or obsolete words (with expected past tense and past participle forms):

A few of these verbs once formed their past tense through reduplication. The verbs and the past tense forms were:

All but the first are attested only in the Anglian dialects.

Notes:


 * The dialectal verb greet is a merger of two strong verbs, one of Class 2, the other of Class 7. Therefore, the same verb is listed in both classes to show what its original strong forms might have become.
 * Hight (an archaic word meaning named, called) was originally the past tense of the obsolete verb hote, and the old past participle form was hoten. In Middle English, the past tense form took over the old past participle form. The infinitive hote in later use was often conflated with the past participle hight.
 * Leap also gained the past tense form lope and the past participle form lopen by analogy with other strong verbs, but in the end, leap became an irregular weak verb, and it is also often used as a fully regular verb.
 * Even in Old English, read had already come to be used as a weak verb; seldom did the strong forms appear.
 * Sleep, and weep are now irregular weak verbs.

Weak verbs made strong
There are some weak verbs that have become strong by analogy.

Notes:


 * Dive is historically a weak transitive verb that meant dip, but became conflated with an intransitive Class 2 verb meaning dive (and dive happened to be the causative of the verb). The resulting verb was weak in Middle English, but around the 19th century, it became strong by analogy with verbs of this class and gained the past tense form dove. This class's pattern being followed, the logical past participle of dive is diven, but those who use dove as the past tense of dive generally use dived as the past participle instead.
 * Hide became strong through its new past participle, hidden, from which the irregular past tense hide was formed; the analogous past tense form hode is not attested.
 * Load was originally only a noun and meant way, path (as found in lode, truly the same word spelled differently), and the word used instead was lade. Load began to be used as a verb and eventually became the usual word. It formed a past participle by analogy with the past participle laden, but loaden is now archaic.
 * Proven was formed from preve, an alternate form of prove that was used in Middle English. Preve died out in the standard speech, but survived in Scotland, and proven first appeared in Scottish legal contexts. The Scottish pronunciation has proven rhyme with woven, but in all other areas, it has the same vowel as is in the infinitive, which thus makes it look as if it had been formed by analogy with verbs like beat and hew.
 * It is common in American English to use snuck instead of sneaked, but the root thereof is not certain, since there is no clear analogy for the shift from sneaked to snuck.
 * Spit is sometimes used as an irregular weak verb with past tense and past participle spit.
 * The history of the strong forms of stick is somewhat complicated; originally, in Middle English, it formed strong forms by analogy with Class 4 verbs, and these forms are the ones used today. But there was also another verb, steek, which had strong forms based on Class 5 (and so stack and stake were used as past tense forms) and with which stick had been often confused. In the end, steek became disused in the standard speech, and stick ended up using stuck as the past tense and the past participle.
 * Paven and wreathen appear to be mainly poetic forms.