Word.ws English Dictionary

Past tense of distinguish

regular verb

The past tense of distinguish is distinguished. The past participle is also distinguished.

Forms of distinguish

Base form (V1)distinguish /dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪʃ/
Past tense (V2)distinguished /dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪʃt/
Past participle (V3)distinguished /dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪʃt/
Present participledistinguishing
Third person singulardistinguishes

Distinguished in a sentence

  • It had begun to take a leading place even in the days of the Ptolemies, and in scientific, as distinguished from purely literary work, it had assumed a position of primary importance early in the Christian era.1922, De Lacy O'Leary, Arabic Thought and Its Place in History
  • The physics of elementary particles in the 20th century was distinguished by the observation of particles whose existence had been predicted by theorists sometimes decades earlier.2012 March-April, Jeremy Bernstein, “A Palette of Particles”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 146
  • Hard k, t, s, ch, as distinguished from soft, g, d, z, j.From the entry hard
  • It was only posthumously that Julian was distinguished with the eponym "Apostate".From the entry eponym
  • Let X be a topological space with a distinguished point p.From the entry distinguished

Meaning of distinguish

  1. verb To recognize someone or something as different from others based on its characteristics.
  2. verb To see someone or something clearly or distinctly.
  3. verb To make noticeably different or better from others through accomplishments.

Full definition of distinguish

Questions about the past tense of distinguish

What is the past tense of distinguish?
The past tense of distinguish is distinguished.
What is the past participle of distinguish?
The past participle of distinguish is distinguished.
Is distinguish a regular or irregular verb?
Distinguish is a regular verb: its past tense adds -ed.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: distinguish (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 distinguish.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/distinguish. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.