Template:en-verb

en-verb (third-person singular simple present en-verbs, present participle en-verbing, simple past and past participle en-verbed)

The following documentation is located at Template:en-verb/documentation. ^[edit]

Useful links: subpage list • links • redirects • transclusions • errors (parser/module) • sandbox

Uses Lua:

Module:en-headword

Use this template to show the inflection line of an English verb.

This template contains the necessary meta-data to allow users who are using accelerated editing to create any grammatical forms semi-automatically.

This template shows the verb in bold (optionally linking its components) and its key inflections.

{{en-verb}}
{{en-verb|...s|...ing|...d}}
{{en-verb|...s|...ing|...ed|...en}}
{{en-verb|...s|...ing|...d,...t}}

Basic parameters

For most regular verbs, no parameters are necessary. Examples of such verbs are:

open (opens, opening, opened);
wish, with present third singular in -es (wishes, wishing, wished);
marry, with final -y converted to i before -s and -ed (marries, marrying, married);
flip, with the final consonant doubled before -ing and -ed (flips, flipping, flipped);
baptize, with final -e dropped before -ing and -ed (baptizes, baptizing, baptized);
free, with final -e dropped only before -ed (frees, freeing, freed);
tie, with final -ie converted to -y before -ing (ties, tying, tied).

For example, on the page flip, simply write: {{en-verb}}
which produces
flip (third-person singular simple present flips, present participle flipping, simple past and past participle flipped)

Other examples:

of type (1) above: lift, pack, enjoy, flow;

of type (2) above: hiss, buzz, tax, watch;

of type (3) above: levy, cry, pacify, carry;

of type (4) above: strum, nag, trek, stop;

of type (5) above: rake, admire, love, argue;

of type (6) above: toe, canoe, referee, dye;

of type (7) above: lie, underlie, untie, vie.

Type (4) verbs above only have the final consonant doubled automatically if they consist of a single syllable. Type (4) verbs with more than one syllable should have the parameter ++ specified. Examples: refer (refers, referring, referred), abet (abets, abetting, abetted), handicap (handicaps, handicapping, handicapped). Specify these verbs as follows:

{{en-verb|++}}

For verbs that are irregular with respect to the above rules, specify the irregular form(s) explicitly, and either leave the remaining form(s) blank or use the +, which requests the default and is always equivalent to leaving a parameter blank. An example is stomach, where the above rules would produce the incorrect -s form stomaches instead of the correct form stomachs:

{{en-verb|stomachs}}

or equivalently:

{{en-verb|~s}}

Here, ~ stands for the verb lemma form stomach.

Another example is Hail Mary:

{{en-verb|Hail Marys|Hail Marying|Hail Maryed}}

or equivalently:

{{en-verb|~s|~ing|~ed}}

There is a special code +! to aid in conjugating verbs like Hail Mary. It says to add -s, -ing and -ed, respectively for the three parameters, regardless of the form of the verb. Essentially, it treats the verb like type (1) verbs above, regardless of its form. This appears as follows: {{en-verb|+!}}
which produces
Hail Mary (third-person singular simple present Hail Marys, present participle Hail Marying, simple past and past participle Hail Maryed)

Irregular verbs

For irregular (strong) verbs, specify the key forms (third-person present singular, the present participle, the simple past tense, and optionally the past participle):

For the verb do:
{{en-verb|does|doing|did|done}}

or equivalently (because the form doing is regular):

{{en-verb|does||did|done}}
For the verb see:
{{en-verb|sees|seeing|saw|seen}}

or equivalently (because the forms sees and seeing are regular):

{{en-verb|||saw|n}}

Here, n requests the regularly derived -en form participle.
For the verb set:
{{en-verb|sets|setting|set}}

or equivalently:

{{en-verb|||set}}

Some irregular verbs have multiple forms for some inflections. Show additional forms or notes for any inflection:

For the verb work:
{{en-verb|works|working|worked,wrought<l:obsolete>}}

or equivalently, using + to request the default values:

{{en-verb|+|+|+,wrought<l:obsolete>}}
For the verb ill:
{{en-verb|+|+,illin'}}

Some irregular verbs are defective. To indicate a missing form, use -, as with the modal verb can: {{en-verb|can|-|could|-}}
which produces
can (third-person singular simple present can, no present participle, simple past could, no past participle)

Multiword expressions

By default, a multiword expression is treated just like a single word. This is correct for cases like belly dance (belly dances, belly dancing, belly danced), but not for cases like log on (logs on, logging on, logged on). Special support is available to make it easier to specify the forms of the latter type of expressions. Use * to indicate that only the first word is conjugated, following the normal rules above. For example, for log on, write: {{en-verb|*}}
which produces
log on (third-person singular simple present logs on, present participle logging on, simple past and past participle logged on)

You can similarly use ** to get the combined effects of ++ and *, e.g. for commit to memory, write: {{en-verb|**}}
which produces
commit to memory (third-person singular simple present commits to memory, present participle committing to memory, simple past and past participle committed to memory)

Multiword expressions with irregular verbs

An alternative format can be used to compactly specify the conjugation of irregular verbs in multiword expressions. For example, for the idiom throw a spanner in the works, use the following: {{en-verb|throw<,,threw,thrown> a spanner in the works}}
which produces
throw a spanner in the works (third-person singular simple present throws a spanner in the works, present participle throwing a spanner in the works, simple past threw a spanner in the works, past participle thrown a spanner in the works)

Here, the verb to be inflected is followed by up to four comma-separated forms inside of angle brackets <...>. These four forms correspond to parameters 1 through 4: respectively the -s form (third person present singular), -ing form (present participle), -ed form (past tense) and -en form (past participle). Any of the four forms can be omitted to have them use the default rules described above, and the fourth form can be omitted if the past participle is the same as the past tense. For example, for hold a grudge, use the following: {{en-verb|hold<,,held> a grudge}}
which produces
hold a grudge (third-person singular simple present holds a grudge, present participle holding a grudge, simple past and past participle held a grudge)

Here, the fourth form is omitted because the past participle is the same as the past tense.

Because conjugating just the first word in a multiword expression is so common, a shortcut form is provided consisting of just the angle bracket expression by itself. For example, for throw a spanner in the works, you can also write just: {{en-verb|<,,threw,thrown>}}
which produces
throw a spanner in the works (third-person singular simple present throws a spanner in the works, present participle throwing a spanner in the works, simple past threw a spanner in the works, past participle thrown a spanner in the works)

This is equivalent to writing out the multiword expression with the angle brackets placed after the word neeeding to be conjugated. The longer form must be used to conjugate anything but the first word. For example, for boldly go where no man has gone before, you must write: {{en-verb|boldly go<goes,,going,gone> where no man has gone before}}
which produces
boldly go where no man has gone before (third-person singular simple present boldly goes where no man has gone before, present participle boldly going where no man has gone before, simple past boldly going where no man has gone before, past participle boldly gone where no man has gone before)

And for aid and abet, use: {{en-verb|aid<> and abet<++>}}
which produces
aid and abet (third-person singular simple present aids and abets, present participle aiding and abetting, simple past and past participle aided and abetted)

In this case, there are two words that conjugate, and the second requires the code ++ to get the forms abetting and abetted with double t, just as would be required for abet alone.

Within angle brackets, you can specify multiple alternatives for a given form by separating them with a colon (:). After a given form, you can attach a qualifier, label or reference in brackets, i.e. [...]. An example that uses both is get over with (or any other expression involving get): {{en-verb|<,,got,got[UK]:gotten[US]>}}
which produces
get over with (third-person singular simple present gets over with, present participle getting over with, simple past got over with, past participle (UK) got over with or (US) gotten over with)

The past participle of get is got in the UK but gotten in the US, as indicated.

Text in brackets is normally treated as a label (of the sort specified as a parameter to {{lb}}), meaning that words recognized as labels will be linked appropriately. All the same syntactic variants available for {{lb}} work here, too. For example, use [rare,nonstandard] to specify two labels rare and nonstandard (each of which will be linked appropriately), and you can use the <<...>> syntax to explicitly specify the portion of the value that is a label, as in [especially in the <<UK>>]. You can explicitly force a bracketed expression to be treated as a qualifier, label or reference by prefixing it with q: (for left qualifiers), qq: (for right qualifiers), l: (for left labels), ll: (for right labels), and ref: for references, using the normal inline modifier reference syntax described in detail in the documentation for {{IPA}}.

Another example using colon-separated alternatives is wake up and smell the coffee: {{en-verb|wake<,,woke,woken> up and smell<,,:smelt> the coffee|head=~wake up:~}}
which produces
wake up and smell the coffee (third-person singular simple present wakes up and smells the coffee, present participle waking up and smelling the coffee, simple past woke up and smelled the coffee or woke up and smelt the coffee, past participle woken up and smelled the coffee or woken up and smelt the coffee)

Here, the past tense and past participle of smell is either regular smelled (specified using an empty form, which defaults to the regular -ed form) or irregular smelt. |head= is explicitly used, using the link modification syntax described below, so that wake up is linked as a single expression rather than separately linked as two words. Note how the alternative forms smelled and smelt are "distributed" across the past tense woke and past participle woken, producing two past tense variants and two past participle variants.

In some cases, the entire expression can be conjugated in more than one way. For example, in the expression rock and roll, either each verb can conjugate individually (rocking and rolling) or the expression can be conjugated as a unit (rock and rolling). To express this, specify the two variants as comma-separated and surrounded by double parentheses, as follows: {{en-verb|((rock<> and roll<>,rock and roll<>))}}
which produces
rock and roll (third-person singular simple present rocks and rolls or rock and rolls, present participle rocking and rolling or rock and rolling, simple past and past participle rocked and rolled or rock and rolled)

Finally, it is also possible to use the angle-bracket format with expressions such as reap what one sows, which have a verb in them that must always be listed in a finite tense. It is simply necessary to be careful in specifying the forms. As an example: {{en-verb|reap<> what one sows<~,~,sowed:had sown,has sown:had sown>|head=~sow[s:]}}
which produces
reap what one sows (third-person singular simple present reaps what one sows, present participle reaping what one sows, simple past reaped what one sowed or reaped what one had sown, past participle reaped what one has sown or reaped what one had sown)

Here, we cannot default any of the forms of sows (which would wrongly produce sowses, sowsed, etc.), and we use alternants to express the fact that the past tense can be either reaped what one sowed or reaped what one had sown (and similarly for the past participle). Here, ~ stands for the form sows being conjugated, and |head=~sow[s:] uses the link modification syntax to link sows to the infinitive sow. Similarly for know which side one's bread is buttered on: {{en-verb|know<,,knew,known> which side one's bread is<is,is,was> buttered on|head=~is:be; buttered:butter#Verb}}
which produces
know which side one's bread is buttered on (third-person singular simple present knows which side one's bread is buttered on, present participle knowing which side one's bread is buttered on, simple past knew which side one's bread was buttered on, past participle known which side one's bread was buttered on)

In this case, |head= uses two link modifications to link is to be and buttered specifically to the verbal definition of butter#Verb.

Special indicators and default values

The above discussion mentioned the use of + to stand for the default, as well as the special indicators ++, * and **. The full set of special indicators is as follows:

Indicator	Corresponding multiword indicator	Meaning
`^` (or `+` in `\|1=`)	`*`	Apply the default rules.
`++`	`**`	Double the last consonant before an ending beginning with a vowel.
`+l`	`*l`	Produce two outputs before a vowel-initial ending, one with a single final consonant labeled `US` and one with a double final consonant labeled `UK`.
`+!`	`*!`	Always use the endings -s, -ing and -ed regardless of the form of the lemma.
`+'`	`*'`	Use endings beginning with an apostrophe, namely -'s; -'ing; and -'d and -'ed (two outputs are produced).

The special indicator +l is useful for verbs like travel, label, pencil, fuel, carol and many others in -l (and some in other consonants) that double the final -l in UK/Commonwealth spelling but use a single final -l in US spelling. It produces two outputs, labeled appropriately. For example, for travel: {{en-verb|+l}}
which produces
travel (third-person singular simple present travels, present participle (US) traveling or (UK) travelling, simple past and past participle (US) traveled or (UK) travelled)

The special indicator +! is useful with verbs like Hail Mary (“to make a “Hail Mary” pass in football”) and wok (“to cook with a wok”) that ignore the normal rules that modify the lemma before certain endings. For example, for wok: {{en-verb|+!}}
which produces
wok (third-person singular simple present woks, present participle woking, simple past and past participle woked)

The special indicator +' is useful with verbs like TA (“to act as a teaching assistant, e.g. when overseeing a test”) that use an apostrophe before endings: {{en-verb|+'}}
which produces
TA (third-person singular simple present TA's, present participle TA'ing, simple past and past participle TA'd or TA'ed)

Many of the verbs that use the latter two indicators also have other forms. For example, TA also has forms TAs, TAing, etc. without an apostrophe, and a past tense TAd without the apostrophe and with an irregular past tense ending -d. Indicate this as follows: {{en-verb|+!,+'|+|+,~d}}
which produces
TA (third-person singular simple present TAs or TA's, present participle TAing or TA'ing, simple past and past participle TAed or TA'd or TA'ed or TAd)

As this shows, the special indicators given in |1= become the defaults for later parameters. Hence the |+= in |2= and |3= is equivalent to specifying |+!,+'= explicitly. Note in particular the spec |3=+,~d, which produces four outputs: one from +!, two from +', and one from ~d.

Another example showing the same principle is leaflet: {{en-verb|+,++}}
which produces
leaflet (third-person singular simple present leaflets, present participle leafleting or leafletting, simple past and past participle leafleted or leafletted)

Here, the two special indicators + (which is internally mapped to ^) and ++ cause two outputs to happen in the present participle and past tense/past participle, respectively with one final t and two final t's. This happens even though both indicators result in the same form (he/she) leaflets in the present third person singular, which is deduplicated to a single form.

Inline modifiers can be applied to special indicators and are carried through to all forms. For example, for acronym: {{en-verb|+,++<l:rare>}}
which produces
acronym (third-person singular simple present acronyms, present participle acronyming or (rare) acronymming, simple past and past participle acronymed or (rare) acronymmed)

This also shows that, when deduplicating two forms, the labels and qualifiers on the second one are normally dropped, because they apply only to the second (deduplicated) form and not to the combination.

Note that for each special indicator, there is a corresponding multiword special indicator that involves replacing + with *. This will apply the specified indicator to the first word of a multiword expression, leaving the remaining words as-is. An example where this is useful is parcel out: {{en-verb|*l}}
which produces
parcel out (third-person singular simple present parcels out, present participle (US) parceling out or (UK) parcelling out, simple past and past participle (US) parceled out or (UK) parcelled out)

The exact rules for handling the + indicator (which means "substitute the default value" and is always equivalent to leaving a parameter blank or missing) are as follows:

For |1=: Apply the default rules according to the form of the lemma (drop final -e before vowel-initial endings; double a final consonant in single-syllable verbs after a short vowel; convert -y after a consonant to -i before -es and -ed; etc.). (Technically, the default for |1= is the indicator ^, which applies these default rules. You can use ^ in other parameters to explicitly request the default rules; e.g. if multiple special indicators were specified in |1= and you don't want all of them to apply. But this is rarely needed, and it may be clearer in that case just to write out the form(s) in question.)
For |2= and |3=: Generate form(s) according to the special indicator(s) given in |1=, ignoring forms that aren't special indicators and defaulting to ^ ("apply the default rules").
For |4=: Copy whatever is in |3=.

All parameters

There are two basic parameter formats, the separate parameter format and the angle bracket format. Generally, the angle bracket format is used for multiword expressions and the separate parameter format for single-word verbs. The angle bracket format uses |1=, specifying verb forms in angle brackets. This is documented in the previous section. The separate parameter format specifies the four principal parts of a verb (the -s, -ing, -ed and -en forms, respectively) in parameters |1= through |4=:

|1=: Third-person present singular form(s). Separate multiple forms with a comma, with no space following. Inline modifiers can be attached to individual forms.
|2=: Present participle form(s), allowing for multiple forms and inline modifiers as with parameter |1=.
|3=: Simple past tense form(s), allowing for multiple forms and inline modifiers as with parameter |1=.
|4=: Past participle form(s), if different from the past tense, allowing for multiple forms and inline modifiers as with parameter |1=.

NOTE: Only specify past participle forms if different from the past tense. If no past participle forms are given, or all forms given are the same as the past tense forms, only the past tense forms are displayed, identified as simple past and past participle; otherwise, the simple past forms and past participle forms are displayed separately.

There are no parameters for archaic forms, such as hast or hath (of have), dost or doth (of do), or art, wast, wert (of be). These forms can be noted in usage notes if needed, but should not be included in the headword forms.

The following parameters are additionally supported on all English headword templates, including {{en-verb}}:

|head=: Override the headword display; used to add links to individual words in a multiword term. If necessary, you can include multiple forms separated by a comma (with no space following) and include inline modifiers, but both of these variants are rarely nececssary.
|id=: Sense ID for linking to this headword. See {{senseid}} for more information.
|nolink=1/|nolinkhead=1, |splithyph=1, |nosplithyph=1, |hyphspace=1: Control how multiword terms are linked. See Module:en-headword/documentation for more information.
|nosuffix=1: Prevent terms beginning with a hyphen from being interpreted as suffixes. See Module:en-headword/documentation#Suffix handling for more information.
|nomultiwordcat=1: Prevent multiword terms (those with spaces or with hyphens in the middle) from being added to Category:English multiword terms.
|angle_bracket=1: Force interpretation of the spec in |1= as an angle-bracket spec, in case of ambiguity. This is almost never necessary, as the code is smart about determining whether a given value of |1= contains an angle-bracket spec or an inline modifier spec, and almost always guesses right.
|angle_bracket=0: Force interpretation of the spec in |1= as an inline modifier spec, in case of ambiguity. This is almost never necessary; see above.
|pagename=: Override the page name used to compute default values of various sorts. Useful when testing, for documentation pages, etc.
|sort=: Sort key. Rarely needs to be specified, as it is normally automatically generated.

Exact rules

For reference, the exact rules used to generate regular verb forms are as follows:

For the -s form, use the following rules:
1. If the verb ends in -s, -z, -x, -ch or -sh, add -es.
2. If the verb ends in consonant + -y, drop the -y and add -ies.
3. Otherwise, just add -s.
For the -ed form, use the following rules:
1. If the verb ends in -e, add -d.
2. If the verb ends in consonant + -y, drop the -y and add -ied.
3. If the verb is of the form C*VC, i.e. any number of consonants + vowel + single consonant (unless the final consonant is -w, -x, -y or -h), double the final consonant and add -ed.
4. Otherwise, just add -ed.
For the -ing form, use the following rules:
1. If the verb ends in -ue, drop the -e and add -ing.
2. If the verb ends in -ie, drop the -ie and add -ying.
3. If the verb ends in a vowel + one or more consonants + -e, drop the -e and add -ing.
4. If the verb is of the form C*VC, i.e. any number of consonants + vowel + single consonant (unless the final consonant is -w, -x, -y or -h), double the final consonant and add -ing.
5. Otherwise, just add -ing.

Autosplitting

{{en-verb}}, as with all English headword-line templates, implements an intelligent, customized algorithm for automatically splitting and linking the components of a multiword term. See Module:en-headword/documentation#Autosplitting for more information.

Suffix handling

{{en-verb}}, as with all English headword-line templates, will normally interpret a term beginning with a hyphen as a suffix and handle it specially. See Module:en-headword/documentation#Suffix handling for more information.

Link modifications

{{en-verb}}, as with all English headword-line templates, has a special mechanism for overriding the default linking behavior of individual terms in a multiword expression without having to repeat the entire expression. See Module:en-headword/documentation#Link modifications for more information.