Past Participles

Past participles are parts of verbs used to form many verb tenses. They are used to form the past perfect tense, present perfect tense, and future perfect tense, but what are they? Here are some examples.

I have seen six deer!

The students have graduated from high school.

What Are They?

Every verb has what are called four principal parts. This means that we can take any verb and break it into these parts. Past participles are simply one of those principal parts of a verb.

Here is a chart showing you some examples of verbs broken into their principal parts.

Present	Present Participle	Past
come	(is) coming	came	(have) come
fall	(is) falling	fell	(have) fallen
go	(is) going	went	(have) gone
graduate	(is) graduating	graduated	(have) graduated
know	(is) knowing	knew	(have) known
run	(is) running	ran	(have) run
write	(is) writing	wrote	(have) written

Regular Verbs

Good news! Regular verbs follow a pattern!

That's why they are called regular. If you have a regular verb, simply add -d or -ed to the present tense form of the verb.

Present Tense	+ d or ed
learn	+ ed	learned
spike	+ d	spiked
play	+ ed	played

You can learn more about regular verbs if you would like!

Irregular Verbs

Bad news! Irregular verbs don't follow a pattern. This can make it hard to know the past participles of irregular verbs. But, know that you can always use a dictionary if you're unsure. You'll see some examples in this chart.

Present Tense	Change to ?
bring	brought	brought
build	built	built
win	won	won

You can learn more about irregular verbs if you would like.

Don't Get Confused

When people talk about participles, they may be referring to something a little different than what we've covered on this page. They might be talking about something called a verbal. Verbals are verb forms that look like verbs but don't act like verbs.

Participles are a type of verbal that act like an adjective instead of a verb.
The running deer were beautiful!
Running is a participle. It looks like a verb, but it acts like an adjective modifying the noun deer.

The burned toast tasted awful.
In this sentence, burned is a participle. It looks like a verb, but it acts like an adjective modifying the noun toast.

Elizabeth O'Brien from Grammar Revolution

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