Past tense of best
regular verb
The past tense of best is bested. The past participle is also bested.
Forms of best
| Base form (V1) | best /bɛst/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | bested /ˈbɛstɪd/ |
| Past participle (V3) | bested /ˈbɛstɪd/ |
| Present participle | besting /ˈbɛstɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | bests /bɛsts/ |
Bested in a sentence
- You bested me, Uncle.2010, T. William Phillips, Restless Heart, page 16
- Thorn's heart pounded in his breast, he'd finally bested his hated boyhood rival.2004, Pat Stevens, Politics Is the Greatest Game: A Johannesburg Liberal Lampoon, →ISBN. From the entry eighthman
- The iron hand with which they ruled was desceptred on Saturday afternoon by the clan of McGeehan who bested them in battle.1928 October 29, “Red and White Severely Jolted In First Defeat of Season By Score of 18: Five Thousand Football Devotees See Red and…. From the entry desceptre
Meaning of best
- adjective Most; largest.
- adjective Most superior; most favorable.
- adverb To the most advantage; with the most success, cause, profit, benefit, or propriety.
Questions about the past tense of best
- What is the past tense of best?
- The past tense of best is bested.
- What is the past participle of best?
- The past participle of best is bested.
- Is best a regular or irregular verb?
- Best is a regular verb: its past tense adds -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: best (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 best.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/best. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.