Past simple (I worked)

Past simple: form

For regular verbs, we add -ed to the base form of the verb (work–worked) or -d if the verb already ends in e (move–moved).

+	I, she, he, it, you, we, they	worked.
−	I, she, he, it, you, we, they	(full form)did not	work.
I, she, he, it, you, we, they	(short form)didn’t
? +	Did I, she, he, it, you, we, they	work?
? –	(full form)Did I, she, he, it, you, we, they not	work?
(short form)Didn’t I, she, he, it, you, we, they

In regular one-syllable verbs with a single vowel followed by a consonant, we double the final consonant when adding -ed to make the past simple:

• stop: The bus stopped suddenly.
• plan: Who planned this trip?

See also

• Spelling and verb forms
• Regular verbs

Past simple: pronunciation of -ed

For regular verbs, there are three possible pronunciations of -ed endings.

/d/	/t/	/ɪd/
after all vowel sounds and after voiced consonants (except /d/)/m/ /n/ /ŋ/ /l/ /g/ /dʒ/ /z/ /b/ /v/	after all voiceless consonants (except /t/)/k/ /p/ /f/ /s/ /ʃ/ /tʃ/	after /d/ and /t/
cried, tried, hurried, weighed, smiled, planned, judged, sneezed, lived	picked, hopped, laughed, crossed, pushed, watched	decided, ended, landed, started, visited, waited

See also

• Spelling and verb forms

Past simple: irregular verbs

Many verbs are irregular. Here are some common ones. Each one has to be learnt. A full list is provided on page 611.

The verb form is the same for all persons (I, you, she, he, it, we, they), and we make questions and negatives with irregular verbs in the same ways as for regular verbs.

irregular verb	example in the past simple
be	She was afraid.
begin	The meal began with soup.
come	Everyone came to my house for the weekend.
do	Look what I did!
eat	The birds ate all of the bread.
fly	We flew from New York to Mexico City.
have	She had such a good time.
know	We knew each other well in college.
read	I read that book last year. (/red/)
sing	Her sister sang a beautiful song at the party.
tell	He told me a funny story.
wake	When she woke up, it was already 1 pm!
write	I wrote him an email to explain why I couldn’t meet him.

See also

• Irregular verbs
• Verbs

Past simple: uses

Definite time in the past

We use the past simple to talk about definite time in the past (often we specify when something happened, e.g. yesterday, three weeks ago, last year, when I was young):

• Did you watch that film yesterday?
• He left at the end of November.
• When they were young, they hated meat.

See also

• Present simple (I work)

Single or habitual events or states

We use the past simple to talk about single or regular (habitual) events or states in the past.

Events that happened once	He fell off his bike and his friends took him to a doctor.She ran out and she phoned my brother.
Events that happened more than once	They travelled to Italy every summer and always stayed in small villages on the coast.As children, we played all kinds of games on the street.
States	She looked a bit upset.Did you feel afraid?

When we use the past simple to refer to habitual events, the meaning is similar to used to:

• I did a lot of travelling when I was younger. (or I used to do a lot of travelling when I was younger.)

See also

• Used to or would?

The past simple with no time reference

Sometimes there is no time expression when the past simple is used. This happens especially when we know the time:

• Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa. (From our general knowledge, we know that Leonardo Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa a few hundred years ago.)

Compare

Do you know Grace? She was in my class at primary school.	Do you know Grace? She was in my class at primary school in the 70s.
Past simple without a definite time reference: both speakers know when this time was and do not need to say it. They know each other well.	Past simple with a definite time reference: the speaker is not sure if the listener knows when she was at primary school.

Past simple and the order of events

When one past event happens after another, the first one mentioned in the past simple happened first and the second one happened next, and so on. If we change the order of the verbs, this changes the meaning.

Compare

[event 1] I turned off the light and [event 2] got into bed.	The first event in the past simple happened first. The second event in the past simple happened second, and so on.
[event 1] I got into bed and [event 2] turned off the light.