Top 25 Most Commonly Used Verbs

“Why indeed must ''God'' be a noun? Why not a verb—the most active and dynamic of all.”—Mary Daly

Based on the evidence of the billion-word Oxford English Corpus, the most frequently used verbs found in writing around the world include:

1. be
2. have
3. do
4. say
5. get
6. make
7. go
8. know
9. take
10. see
11. come
12. think
13. look
14. want
15. give
16. use
17. find
18. tell
19. ask
20. work
21. seem
22. feel
23. try
24. leave
25. call

This verb list expresses basic concepts. The bolded words in the list above are weak verbs to delete and replace. To improve your writing, consider finding other words instead of the top 25 most used verbs.

Weak verbs form their past tense by adding –ed. Strong or active verbs form their past tense by changing a vowel, i.e., swim, swam, swum, or other changes, i.e. fly, flew, flown.