Past tense of frighten
regular verb
The past tense of frighten is frightened. The past participle is also frightened.
Forms of frighten
| Base form (V1) | frighten /ˈfɹaɪ.tən/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | frightened /ˈfɹaɪtn̩d/ |
| Past participle (V3) | frightened /ˈfɹaɪtn̩d/ |
| Present participle | frightening /ˈfɹaɪtənɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | frightens |
Frightened in a sentence
- The frightened horse reared up and unseated its rider.From the entry unseat
- She looked very much frightened of the storm.From the entry frightened
- I thought I was alone in the house, so his sudden appearance frightened me out of my skin.From the entry out of one's skin
- The elephant was frightened by mice.From the entry frightened
- He was frightened now by the knowledge that I didn’t care that he knew of my crime.2024, Percival Everett, James, Picador (2025), page 292. From the entry premeditatedly
Meaning of frighten
- verb To cause to feel fear; to scare; to cause to feel alarm or fright.
- verb To become scared or alarmed.
Questions about the past tense of frighten
- What is the past tense of frighten?
- The past tense of frighten is frightened.
- What is the past participle of frighten?
- The past participle of frighten is frightened.
- Is frighten a regular or irregular verb?
- Frighten is a regular verb: its past tense adds -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: frighten (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 frighten.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/frighten. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.