Past tense of defile
regular verb
The past tense of defile is defiled. The past participle is also defiled.
Forms of defile
| Base form (V1) | defile /dɪˈfaɪl/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | defiled [dɪˈfaɪ(jə)ɫd] |
| Past participle (V3) | defiled [dɪˈfaɪ(jə)ɫd] |
| Present participle | defiling |
| Third person singular | defiles /dɪˈfaɪ(jə)ɫz/ |
Defiled in a sentence
- I am defiled.”1911 October, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Journey”, in The Forerunner: A Monthly Magazine, volume II, number 10, New York, N.Y....
- The serial rapist kidnapped and defiled a six-year-old girl.
- The menstruater is defiled and defiling because, as she bleeds, she strays beyond the socialized towards the realm of death.1996, John Kerrigan, Revenge Tragedy: Aeschylus to Armageddon, Clarendon Press, →ISBN, page 55. From the entry menstruater
- The Creator's enoughness had been defiled by his creatures, and for the first time, something now existed on this planet that did not glorify him.2014, Matt Heard, Life With A Capital L, pages 140–141. From the entry enoughness
Meaning of defile
- verb To make (someone or something) physically dirty or unclean; to befoul, to soil.
- verb To make (someone or something) morally impure or unclean; to corrupt, to tarnish.
- verb To act inappropriately towards or vandalize (something sacred or special); to desecrate, to profane.
Questions about the past tense of defile
- What is the past tense of defile?
- The past tense of defile is defiled.
- What is the past participle of defile?
- The past participle of defile is defiled.
- Is defile a regular or irregular verb?
- Defile is a regular verb: its past tense adds -d.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: defile (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 defile.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/defile. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.