Past tense of encourage
regular verb
The past tense of encourage is encouraged. The past participle is also encouraged.
Forms of encourage
| Base form (V1) | encourage /ɪnˈkʌɹ.ɪd͡ʒ/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | encouraged /ɪŋˈkɝɪd͡ʒd/ |
| Past participle (V3) | encouraged /ɪŋˈkɝɪd͡ʒd/ |
| Present participle | encouraging /ɪnˈkʌɹɪd͡ʒɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | encourages |
Encouraged in a sentence
- I encouraged him during his race.
- Delia's coach encouraged her to focus on the positives.
- I felt encouraged by all the enthusiastic wavers in the crowd.From the entry waver
- If you set out birdseed in the winter, cardinals will be encouraged to overwinter.From the entry birdseed
- Bram Stoker's novel Dracula built on centuries-old stories of vampires and also encouraged new growth of the mythology.From the entry vampire
Meaning of encourage
- verb To mentally support; to motivate, give courage, hope or spirit.
- verb To spur on, strongly recommend.
- verb To foster, give help or patronage.
Questions about the past tense of encourage
- What is the past tense of encourage?
- The past tense of encourage is encouraged.
- What is the past participle of encourage?
- The past participle of encourage is encouraged.
- Is encourage a regular or irregular verb?
- Encourage is a regular verb: its past tense adds -d.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: encourage (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.
Last updated:
Cite this page: “Past tense of encourage.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/encourage. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.