WRITING                 PRODUCT                COMPANY                                                                                                                                      SEARCH                        START WRITING

Simple Past Tense

The simple past is a verb tense that is used to talk about things that happened or                existed before now. Imagine someone asks what your brother Wolfgang did while he was in town last weekend.

                                           Example                 He won the silver medal.

Here’s a tip: Want to make sure your writing always looks great? Grammarly can save you from misspellings, grammatical and punctuation mistakes, and other writing issues on all your favorite websites.

The simple past tense shows that you are talking about something that has already happened. Unlike the past continuous tense, which is used to talk about past events that happened over a period of time, the simple past tense emphasizes that the action is finished.

                                           Example                    Wolfgang admired the way the light glinted off his silver medal.

You can also use the simple past to talk about a past state of being, such as the way someone felt about something. This is often expressed with the simple past tense of the verb to be and an adjective, noun, or prepositional phrase.

                                           Example                  Wolfgang was proud of his hula hoop victory.

                                           Example                   The contest was the highlight of his week.

How to Formulate the Simple Past

For regular verbs, add -ed to the root form of the verb (or just -d if the root form already ends in an e):

Play→Played Type→Typed Listen→Listened Push→Pushed Love→Loved

For irregular verbs, things get more complicated. The simple past tense of some irregular verbs looks exactly like the root form:

Put→Put Cut→Cut Set→Set Cost→Cost Hit→Hit

For other irregular verbs, including the verb to be, the simple past forms are more erratic:

See→Saw Build→Built Go→Went Do→Did Rise→Rose Am/Is/Are→Was/Were

The good news is that verbs in the simple past tense (except for the verb to be) don’t need to agree in number with their subjects.

                                           Example                      Wolfgang polished his medal. The other winners polished their medals too.

How to Make the Simple Past Negative

Fortunately, there is a formula for making simple past verbs negative, and it’s the same for both regular and irregular verbs (except for the verb to be). The formula is did not + [root form of verb]. You can also use the contraction didn’t instead of did not.

Example                Wolfgang did not brag too much about his hula hoop skills. Wolfgang’s girlfriend didn’t see the contest.

For the verb to be, you don’t need the auxiliary did. When the subject of the sentence is singular, use was not or wasn’t. When the subject is plural, use were not or weren’t.

Example                The third-place winner was not as happy as Wolfgang. The fourth-place winner wasn’t happy at all. The onlookers were not ready to leave after the contest ended. The contestants weren’t ready to leave either.

How to Ask a Question

The formula for asking a question in the simple past tense is did + [subject] + [root form of verb].

Example                Did Wolfgang win the gold medal or the silver medal? Where did Wolfgang go to celebrate? Did the judges decide fairly, in your opinion?

When asking a question with the verb to be, you don’t need the auxiliary did. The formula is was/were + [subject].

Example                Was Wolfgang in a good mood after the contest? Were people taking lots of pictures?

Common Regular Verbs in the Past Tense

Common Irregular Verbs in the Past Tense

Related Articles

Right?

BASICS                                                                                                                    BASICS                                                                                                                 BASICS

Program vs. Programme–What's the                            Emigrate vs. Immigrate–What's the                        Which vs. That: How to Choose

Difference?                                                                 Difference?

Writing, grammar, and communication tips for your inbox.

Your email...You have been successfully subscribed to the Grammarly blog.SUBSCRIBE

Product                                                          Company                                                       Features                                                       Support                                                          Community

Plans                                                                About                                                               Product Feature News                                                        Help CenterFacebook

Grammarly Premium                                   Careers & Culture                                      Tone Detector                                                                        Privacy PolicyInstagram

Grammarly Business                                   Blog                                                                 Grammar Checker                                                            Terms of ServiceTwitter

Grammarly @edu                                        Tech Blog                                                       Plagiarism Checker                                                                   SecurityLinkedIn

2020 © Grammarly Inc.