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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
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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!

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Did you know?

brought
Some dialects use brung instead of brought, echoing Old English brungen and giving a modern nonstandard form a very old parallel.
caught
French verbs borrowed into English usually take ed endings, but catch became caught, giving this imported verb a distinctly irregular past.
thought
Thought, through, and though all contain ough, yet their endings sound different, making one letter pattern a poor pronunciation guide.
taught
Learn once also meant teach, so I'll learn you preserves an older meaning that standard English left behind as teaching vocabulary changed.
fought
Fought's silent gh and laugh's spoken f descend from a similar throaty sound, giving the same old consonant two different outcomes.
forgave
Forgave contains an old strengthening prefix, so its for doesn't mean handing something over on another person's behalf.
overcame
Helen Keller learned speech by feeling her teacher's face, using touch to understand how words could be formed without hearing them.
withdrew
Withdrew hides an older sense of with meaning away or against, rather than together, as in withhold and withstand.
understood
A writer misunderstood laid him on the green as Lady Mondegreen, inventing a person whose name became a term for misheard lyrics.
sought
Sought and sort sound identical in many British accents, but stay distinct in American speech, where the r in sort is pronounced.
bought
Older Americans could call store-bought bread or clothing boughten, keeping a longer form of bought to distinguish shop goods from homemade ones.
forsook
Forsook shares a root with sake, which once meant a legal dispute, giving for your sake an unexpected courtroom ancestor.
broke
Broke can mean having no money, but its cousin bankrupt recalls a broken bench associated with a money dealer.
chose
Hobson's stable customers chose the horse nearest the door or none, inspiring Hobson's choice, a phrase for an offer without alternatives.
wrote
An early typewriter arranged its keys on a rounded dome, making writing look like pressing a pincushion instead of a flat keyboard.

Trivia

  1. 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).

  2. Verbs that form the past tense by adding -ed, like walk-walked, are called what?

    Weak (or regular) verbs.

  3. 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).

  4. Children often say goed or runned before learning the correct forms. What is this self-correcting error called?

    Overregularization.

  5. 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
Printable Irregular verbs Word Search — 10 words, Answer key included

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Sources: Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of language (Nature, 2007) · Harvard Gazette: predicting the future of the past tense · Merriam-Webster: Sneaked or Snuck · Mark Twain, The Awful German Language (A Tramp Abroad)

Word list, facts & trivia researched and compiled by Sam Letterman — spotted a mistake? Tell us and we’ll fix it.