Simple Past Tense—How It’s Used, With Examples

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.

Wolfgang entered a hula hoop contest.

He won the silver medal.

Here’s a tip: Want to make sure your writing shines? Grammarly can check your spelling and
save you from grammar and punctuation mistakes. It even proofreads your text, so your work is
extra polished wherever you write.

Your writing, at its best

Grammarly helps you communicate confidently
WRITE WITH GRAMMARLY

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.

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.

Wolfgang was proud of his hula hoop victory.

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.

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.

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.

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].

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].

Was Wolfgang in a good mood after the contest?

Were people taking lots of pictures?

Common Regular Verbs in the Past Tense

Infinitive Past Tense Negative

to ask asked did not ask
to work worked did not work
to call called did not call
to use used did not use

Common Irregular Verbs in the Past Tense

Infinitive Past Tense Negative
to be was, were was not, were not
to have had did not have
to do did did not do
to say said did not say
to get got did not get
to make made did not make
to go went did not go
to take took did not take
to see saw did not see
to come came did not come

Simple past tense FAQs

What is the simple past tense?

The simple past is a verb tense describing events that already happened.

What are some examples of simple past tense?

“I ate cereal for breakfast this morning.”

“Morganucodon was an early mammal that lived with dinosaurs.”

Can simple past tense express future action?

The simple past tense can only express actions in the past. However, you can show current

ongoing actions that started in the past with the present perfect continuous tense (e.g., “I have

been working there for twenty years”).

Grammarly. Simple Past Tense. 2020. [Online] Available at https://www.grammarly.com/blog/simple-past/ (Accessed 18 February 2023)
Simple Past Tense: Rules And Examples

Yesterday, I washed my car. Last week, I visited my friends. Last year,

I broke my arm. Ten years ago, I studied Korean. All of these things happened
in the past, but these sentences also all have one other thing in common: they
use verbs in the simple past tense. For now, let’s focus on the present and
learn more about this particular verb tense.

What is simple past tense?

When speaking or writing, we use verbs to express actions, states, or
relationships. In English, we use 12 major verb tenses. Each of theses
tenses, generally speaking, identifies when something happened in time. In
the case of simple past tense, we will need to turn back the clock and look at
things we did in days past.

When do you use simple past tense?

We use the simple past tense to refer to actions or states that happened in the
past and are finished and completed. For example, the sentence Samantha
played baseball says that Samantha started and finished playing baseball
sometime in the past. She isn’t playing baseball right now. As another
example, the sentence My dog smelled terrible says that your dog had a
terrible smell in the past, but she doesn’t smell terrible now because you
either aren’t sniffing her or you gave her a bath and now she smells great.
Remember, the simple past tense only refers to events that completely
finished in the past. If a sentence refers to an event that continues into the
present, it doesn’t use the simple past tense. For example, the sentence I
have been cleaning my house for two hours refers to an action that began in
the past but is still happening in the present. This sentence does not use the
simple past, but instead uses a verb tense known as the past continuous
tense.
Now is the best time to learn more about the simple present tense, so
visit our article on the topic.
How to form simple past tense
For most verbs, the method to form the simple past tense is
relatively simple. (See what we did there?) Typically, you would form the past
tense as follows:
• Take the root form of the verb (the one you will find in our
amazing dictionary) and add –ed to the end.
• If the verb ends in -e, you would just add a -d. For example, the simple
past tense of look is looked, and the simple past tense of ignite is ignited.
• For verbs that end in -y, the -y usually changes to an –i if it follows a
consonant. For example, the verb cry becomes cried but the
verb play becomes played.
• One notable exception to this general rule is the group of verbs that use
the –t variant, where they end in a -t instead of a -d. The
verbs build (which becomes built), sleep (which becomes slept),
and send (which sent) are just three examples of verbs that use the –
t variant.
When we add subjects to the mix, things stay relatively simple. The simple
past tense of the verb remains the same regardless of if the subject is singular
or plural or what person (first, second, or third) it is:

• I jumped.
• We jumped.
• You jumped.
• The lion jumped.
• The lions jumped.
Things remain the same for both transitive and intransitive verbs:
• I cleaned.
• I cleaned my room.
 • Tim cooked.
• Tim cooked bacon.
However, the simple past tense gets a lot trickier when we run into irregular
verbs. There are many irregular verbs in English (many of which have
endured from the original days of the English language, which were once
conjugated in much more complex ways) that don’t follow the typical rules of
simple past tense.
Unfortunately, there is no general rule for how to form the simple past tense in
irregular verbs. You will simply need to learn these verb forms (though there
are some patterns) or use a dictionary to figure out what the simple past tense
is.

Here are just a few examples of the simple past tense of some irregular verbs
(present form → irregular past):

• fly → flew
• buy → bought
• think → thought
• know → knew
• choose → chose
• eat → ate
• drive → drove
• swim → swam
• run → ran
• go → went
• drink → drank
• get → got
• stink → stank/stunk
• catch → caught
What about a verb with two past tense forms? Let’s start by looking at
the differences between pleaded and pled.
A very commonly used irregular verb is the verb be. Unlike all other verbs, the
verb be does change in the simple past tense depending on if the subject is
singular or plural. For singular subjects, the simple past tense
of be is was. For plural subjects (and singular you), the simple past tense
is were.
• I was an artist.
• She was rich.
• We were artists.
• They were rich.
•
How to make simple past tense negative
Almost all verbs follow the rules when it comes to making the simple past
tense negative. In order to make the simple past tense negative, you use the
phrase did not before the root form of the verb. The contraction didn’t can also
be used. Here are examples of the simple past tense used in the negative:
• I did not eat the pizza.
• He didn’t go to the bank.
• We didn’t watch the movie.
• My friends did not lie to me.
The most common exception to this rule is our old pal be. To make be
negative in the simple past tense, we use either was not or were
not depending on if the subject is singular or plural. The
contractions wasn’t or weren’t can also be used.
• I was not a bad kid.
• She wasn’t tired.
• We were not alone.
• My parents weren’t amused.
A less common exception has to do with helping verbs. Although these verbs
aren’t often used alone, it is possible to do so. To make the simple past tense
negative, we follow the simple past tense form of the verb with the
word not. Contractions can also be used.
• Ashley solved the math problem, but I could not.
• She passed the math test, but I didn’t.

TheSaurus. Simple Past Tense: Rules And Examples. 2021. [Online] Available at https://www.thesaurus.com/e/grammar/simple-past-tense/
(Accessed 18 February 2023)