Past Simple: Form, Questions, Negatives, and Uses
A complete past-simple guide needs the form, irregular-verb boundary, questions, negatives, and core uses in one place. Splitting those into separate pages would repeat the same paradigm and force readers to reconstruct one tense from fragments.
Use the past form for completed or bounded past situations. Regular verbs usually add -ed; irregular verbs have their own past forms. Ordinary questions and negatives usually use did + the base verb, while be follows the was/were pattern and subject questions can behave differently.
Key details
Important caveats
Be Boundary
Past forms of be are was/were and form their own questions and negatives: “Was she ready?” “They weren’t ready.” Do not apply “did + be” as the ordinary past-simple pattern.
Further guidance
Affirmative Form
Regular verbs usually form the past with -ed or -d: “worked,” “liked.” Many common verbs are irregular and must use their established past forms: “go → went,” “write → wrote,” “take → took.”
Negatives
For ordinary lexical verbs, use did not/didn’t + base verb: “They didn’t go.” The main verb returns to its base form after did.
Questions
For ordinary lexical verbs, put did before the subject: “Did you finish?” “Where did they go?” Subject questions can omit did: “Who wrote the report?”
Uses
Use the past simple for events that happened once or repeatedly in the past and for states that were true for a past period. Time expressions such as yesterday, last year, or ago commonly locate the situation in a finished past frame.
Worked Examples
Completed event: “The team shipped the update yesterday.” Repeated past event: “We walked to school every day.” Negative: “They didn’t ship on Friday.” Question: “Did they ship on Thursday?” Be: “Was the office open?”
Sources and evidence
Sources are shown with the role they play in this guide. Historical or style-sensitive claims are kept within the evidence boundary described above.
- Past simple (opens in a new tab)British Council LearnEnglish · Regular and irregular past forms, common past uses, did questions and negatives, and subject-question exceptions.
- Questions and negatives (opens in a new tab)British Council LearnEnglish · Do-support patterns and the separate behavior of be in questions and negatives.