Strong verbs Strong verbs form their past tense

Strong verbs Strong verbs form their past tense and past participle by changing the stem vowel. In ME, the strong verbs retained inflexions to indicate tense, mood, number, and person.

The patterns in which the vowels change are called the gradation series of the verb. For example, in modern English, the pattern of change for the verb to sing is sing, sang, sung. Knowing the patterns which various verbs display in their principal parts helps to find the root and meaning of a verb more efficiently.

Middle English retained the seven "classes" of Old English strong verbs. Class Usual Form Infinitive 1st Preterite 2nd Preterite Past Participle I i + one cons. (writan) i (writan) a, o (wrat, wrot) i (writen) i ((y-)writen) II (crepe) e (crepe) e (crepe) u (crupen) o ((y-)cropen) III nasal + cons. (drinke) i (drinke) a (drank) u (drunken) u ((y-)drunke(n)) IV e + one cons. (beren) e (bere) a (bar) e (beren) o ((y-)bore(n)) V e + one cons. (kneden) e (knede) a (knad) e (kneden) e ((y-)kneden) VI a+ one cons. (fare) a (fare) o (for) o (foren) a ((y-)faren) VII (holden) (holde) (held) (helden) ((y-)holden)

Weak verbs Weak verbs do not follow the simple inflectional pattern but show certain irregularities, like sellen/solde, bryngen/broghte, reden/radde, lenen/lente, maken/maade. It is easy to identify weak verbs, as they clearly show one or the other variant of the dental suffix in the preterite, like -de, -te, and others. Weak verbs are, however, unproductive, as no new verbs are formed according to this pattern.

Weak verbs form the majority of Middle English verbs. In Old English there existed three classes of weak verbs, but in Middle English these fell together. Singular Pronoun Singular Verb Plural Pronoun Plural Verb i bathede we bathede(n) Thou bathedest ye bathede(n) he, she bathede they bathede(n)

The two types of verbs described here, strong and weak, do not comprise all verbs in the language. There is a different way of dividing the verbs into regular verbs, which comprises most of the weak verbs, and the irregular verbs, which describes the strong verbs, a number of weak verbs with irregular conjugations, and anomalous, or defective verbs. In the past there were far more strong verbs in the language than there are today. Some verbs have gradually just been turned into weak verbs by the abandonment of the old system of root vowel modification and the substitution of the -ed ending. New verbs that have been coined or been borrowed from other languages have usually simply been given the weak form.