Simple Past

In English, the simple past is a tense that’s used to describe an action or habit that was started and completed in the past. It is sometimes called past simple or the preterite (compare the German Präteritum), though the latter term has fallen out of popularity.

The simple past is the most versatile and commonly-used way of expressing past tense in the English language. It is generally used for all statements where an action, and the time it took to complete, are completed.

In addition to indicating past tense, the simple past form of the verb can also be used to indicate a hypothetical situation (see English subjunctive for more).

All English verbs in the simple past are not affected by their number. For example:

They walked three miles.

We walked three miles.

Regular Verbs

In most cases, the simple past of regular verbs is formed by adding an -ed onto the word ending. For example:

walk	walked
jump	jumped
fail	failed
climb	climbed
open	opened
return	returned
wish	wished

In cases where the verb ends in an -e, only a -d is added to avoid a redundant –e. For example:

believe	believed
state	stated
fire	fired
unite	united
use	used
free	freed
cause	caused

In addition, regular verbs ending in a -y form the simple past by ending an -ied. Furthermore, in most of those whose letters end in a consonant-vowel-consonant order, the final consonant doubles before the regular -ed ending. For example:

cry	cried
concur	concurred
try	tried
travel	travelled
backflip	backflipped
ram	rammed

Irregular Verbs

For irregular verbs, there are irregular inflexions of the main verb form. There are few discernible rules that govern these inflexions, and many trace their roots to Anglo-Saxon forms. Several common examples include:

see	saw
lay	laid
tell	told
take	took
bring	brought
stand	stood
lie	lay

In general, the simple past inflexion of irregular verbs resulted from sound changes and linguistic evolution in the English language, and there are no clear rules pertaining to their formation. However, one trend includes words whose -ed ending contracted into a -t, for example, in the words dreamt, meant, slept, and dealt.

Here, we’ve created a free, printable list of the 100 most common simple past forms of irregular verbs: