Missing: several conjugations. Suspect: the verb “beware.” Have you ever used the phrase “I bewared”? Probably not. That’s because “beware” belongs to a special category known as “defective verbs,” which lack several regular tenses and forms otherwise found in English verbs. Unlike most verbs, “beware” appears in only two forms: the imperative, as in “Beware of the dog,” and the infinitive, as in “You need to beware of online scams.” You wouldn’t say, “I am bewaring the dog,” or “I bewared the scam.” These aren’t real tenses — at least not anymore.
“Beware” is a rare case of a Modern English verb becoming defective through extinction. The present and past participle tenses “bewaring” and “bewared” were common in Middle English, but they fell out of use, leaving only the infinitive and imperative forms today. However, many other defective English verbs have always been limited in form.
Most verbs are grammatical chameleons, shifting into various tenses, moods, and conjugations to blend in with the intended context. For instance, the verb “walk” can be used in the infinitive (“to walk”), present (“walk”/”walks”), past (“walked”), present participle (“walking”), and past participle (“have/had walked”). Even irregular verbs such as “eat” (with the forms “eats,” “ate,” “eating,” and “eaten”) still follow the full range of conjugations.
Defective verbs, on the other hand, don’t have all those moving parts. They’re fully functional — they just don’t conjugate in all the typical ways. Most of them are also modal verbs, which means they express states and levels of necessity, possibility, permission, or ability. Consider the modal verb “must,” which exists only in the present. There is no infinitive (“to must”), past (“musted”), present participle (“musting”), or past participle (“have/had musted”). Similarly, “ought” doesn’t have a past or present participle (“oughted” or “oughting”). Other commonly used modal verbs deemed defective include “can,” “may,” “might,” “shall,” “should,” “will,” and “would.”
It’s worth noting that all modal verbs lack present and past participles and infinitive forms, so whether or not they are all labeled “defective” is a gray area. Some linguists argue that they aren’t defective per se because those omissions are built into the rules of modals themselves. In other words, they’re playing by their own grammar rules and are defective by design. But verbs like “beware,” which aren’t modal and have lost forms over time, add an extra layer of mystery to the evolution of language.
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