Verbs are where all the action’s at—literally. They’re one of the main parts of speech that builds language, and they tell us what is actually going in sentences and speech. Verb is called “a word” for a reason (because they’re the most important words in a sentence).
There are many times of verbs, some of the most regularly confused include verb tenses, which are the inflections verbs take to show when they occured. The three principal tenses in English are the present tense, past tense and future tense. Each tense has four forms, or subsets; which, altogether, comprises of the 12 verb tenses in English.
Want to make tense, sense? The present tense has 4 main forms: the present simple, present continuous, present perfect, and present perfect continuous. Learn more about them, here.
The past tense is divided into 4 groups, all of which depict an action as occuring at a point or period of time in the past.
Auxiliary verbs (have/has) play a supporting role in sentences by joining participles to reflect tense/aspect/count/voice.
Hit is an irregular verb with one form: the past tense and past participle of hit are just hit.
Come is the present tense and past participle form of the verb. Came is the past simple tense of come.
The past tense of sneak is sneaked….or snuck.
To be means being as in existing. I am, you are, he is, they are, are are all forms of being in the present (to be).
Verb tenses are points in time. The word tense comes from the Latin tempus, “a portion of time”.
Participles are part verbs and part adjectives (by sometimes modifying nouns) in sentences.
Regular verbs end in -ed in their past tense and past participle forms. Irregular verbs end in something other than -ed to show past tenses.