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The original forms of the ME past tense were wende, wended (our modern form), and past participle wend, but variant wente developed from about 1200. [6] By ca. 1500, wended had prevailed in the transitive senses, whereas wente, restricted to intransitive senses, rivalled and replaced go's older past tense, yede/yode. [7]
The preterite and past participle forms of irregular verbs follow certain patterns. These include ending in -t (e.g. build, bend, send), stem changes (whether it is a vowel, such as in sit, win or hold, or a consonant, such as in teach and seek, that changes), or adding the [n] suffix to the past participle form (e.g. drive, show, rise ...
The verb read /ɹiːd/ has the same spelling in all three forms, but not the same pronunciation for the past tense and past participle /ɹɛd/, as it exhibits vowel shortening. In a few cases the past tense of an irregular verb has the same form as the infinitive of a different verb.
With the exception of the highly irregular verb be, an English verb can have up to five forms: its plain form (or bare infinitive), a third person singular present tense, a past tense (or preterite), a past participle, and the -ing form that serves as both a present participle and gerund.
The past participle of regular verbs is identical to the preterite (past tense) form, described in the previous section. For irregular verbs, see English irregular verbs. Some of these have different past tense and past participle forms (like sing–sang–sung); others have the same form for both (like make–made–made).
The past perfect progressive (sometimes referred to as the past perfect continuous) combines had (the simple past of have) with been (the past participle of be) and the present participle of the main verb: You had been waiting. It is used to refer to an ongoing action that continued up to the past time of reference.
The royal kids might not be allowed to keep some of their Christmas presents from the public this year thanks to the family's strict rules about gift giving.
The term present participle is sometimes used to include the gerund; [20] the term "gerund–participle" is also used to indicate the verb form. The past participle, also sometimes called the passive or perfect participle, is identical to the past tense form (ending in -ed) in the case of regular verbs, for example "loaded", "boiled", "mounted ...