Sometimes you know a word has two forms, but you 're not sure which one is appropriate to use in the situation at hand. This happens a lot with verbs, where past-tense forms can compete for acceptance ...

Use the preterite tense to talk about what has already happened or actions that have been completed. It is often used with specific time frames, eg yesterday, last year. Irregular verbs in the ...

No matter how long you’ve been speaking English, no matter how hard you’ve worked to perfect your grammar, some past tense verbs can stump you. For example, the day after you decide to grin and bear ...

Subject-verb agreement means that your verb must be conjugated, or changed, to fit (or agree) with the subject. Subjects can be singular or plural. Think of singular and plural as mathematical ...

Explore the evolutionary dynamics of language through verb changes seen from Old English to modern times. Discover the future of irregular verbs. For decades, scientists have realised that languages ...

Have you ever felt that English could use a couple more tenses to truly capture the nuances of the past, present, and future? We’re inviting you on an exploration of languages that have taken verb ...

Many of us who write and speak in English will likely be surprised when told that unlike the Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Italian among them), English doesn’t have a ...

The dictionary is gaslighting me. I know I sound crazy, but that’s just proof of gaslighting, right? Let me explain. For years I’ve been telling people that they never have to agonize over whether to ...

There are variations in the way verbs form the past tense. They can be looked at in the following way: ...

This article is reposted from the old WordPress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I’ll return with fresh material. For decades, ...