Past tense of behead
regular verb
The past tense of behead is beheaded. The past participle is also beheaded.
Forms of behead
| Base form (V1) | behead /bɪˈhɛd/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | beheaded |
| Past participle (V3) | beheaded |
| Present participle | beheading /bɪˈhɛˌdɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | beheads |
Beheaded in a sentence
- They gasped at the sight of the beheaded king.From the entry beheaded
- The nest cavity was situated on top of a dead beheaded awara palm tree Astrocaryum vulgare.2017, Olivier Claessens, Nyls de Pracontal, Johan Ingels, “The Owls of French Guiana”, in Paula L. Enríquez, editor, Neotropical Owls…. From the entry awara
- When he passed out, she beheaded him, causing his soldiers to panic and flee.1997, Reudor, “The Women of Hanukkah”, in The Doodle Family Hanukkah, Huntington Beach, Calif.: Atara Publishing, →ISBN, page 46. From the entry blintse
- The barbarians were duodecimated — i.e., one out of every twelve was beheaded.1974, Jean d’Ormesson, The Glory of the Empire, page 298. From the entry duodecimate
- Such lines are said to be acephalous (headless) or, as acrostic writers would put it, “beheaded.”1934, Robert Swann, Frank Sidgwick, chapter 2, in The Making of Verse: A Guide to English Metres, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, page 16. From the entry acephalous
Meaning of behead
- verb To deliberately remove the head of; to cut off (someone's) head.
Questions about the past tense of behead
- What is the past tense of behead?
- The past tense of behead is beheaded.
- What is the past participle of behead?
- The past participle of behead is beheaded.
- Is behead a regular or irregular verb?
- Behead is a regular verb: its past tense adds -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: behead (page history and authors) and the entries of its forms. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws left out forms marked obsolete, archaic, rare or dialectal and added the examples. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this page: “Past tense of behead.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/behead. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.