New verbs (including loans from other languages, and nouns employed as verbs) usually follow the regular inflection, unless they are compound formations from an existing irregular verb (such as housesit, from sit). The irregular verbs include many of the most common verbs: the dozen most frequently used English verbs are all irregular. There are a few exceptions: the verb be has irregular forms throughout the present tense the verbs have, do, and say have irregular -s forms and certain defective verbs (such as the modal auxiliaries) lack most inflection. The other inflected parts of the verb-the third person singular present indicative in -s, and the present participle and gerund form in -ing-are formed regularly in most cases. In most cases, the irregularity concerns the past tense (also called preterite) or the past participle. The English language has many irregular verbs, approaching 200 in normal use-and significantly more if prefixed forms are counted.
