Past tense of escalate
regular verb
The past tense of escalate is escalated. The past participle is also escalated.
Forms of escalate
| Base form (V1) | escalate /ˈɛs.kə.leɪt/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | escalated |
| Past participle (V3) | escalated |
| Present participle | escalating |
| Third person singular | escalates |
Escalated in a sentence
- Violence escalated during the election.
- The shooting escalated the existing hostility.
- He intimated that we should leave before the argument escalated.From the entry intimate
- His inclination to drink escalated to alcoholism.From the entry inclination
- In the first scenario, a minor skirmish escalated into a multiweek maritime blockade of Taiwan by China.2026 January 19, Bonnie S. Glaser, Zack Cooper, “A Failed Chinese Invasion of Taiwan Would Be Disastrous for Xi Jinping”, in Foreign…. From the entry de-escalate
Meaning of escalate
- verb To increase (something) in extent or intensity; to intensify or step up.
- verb In technical support, to transfer a customer, a problem, etc. to the next higher level of authority.
- verb To climb.
Questions about the past tense of escalate
- What is the past tense of escalate?
- The past tense of escalate is escalated.
- What is the past participle of escalate?
- The past participle of escalate is escalated.
- Is escalate a regular or irregular verb?
- Escalate is a regular verb: its past tense adds -d.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: escalate (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 escalate.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/escalate. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.