The common pattern in these changes was for the weak verbs to drive out the strong ones, but sometimes it worked the other way, so that today we have torn instead of teared and knew rather than knowed. Many of these have become regularized, but there are still 250 irregular verbs in English, and a surprising number of these are still fluid—so that even now most of us are not always sure whether we should say dived or dove, sneaked or snuck, hove or heaved, wove or weaved, strived or strove, swelled or swollen.
