Past tense of gnaw
regular verb
The past tense of gnaw is gnawed. The past participle is also gnawed.
Forms of gnaw
| Base form (V1) | gnaw /nɔː/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | gnawed |
| Past participle (V3) | gnawed |
| Present participle | gnawing /ˈnɔː.ɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | gnaws |
Less standard forms: gnew (dialectal).
Gnawed in a sentence
- The dog gnawed the bone until it broke in two.
- Her comment gnawed at me all day and I couldn't think about anything else.
- A mouse had gnawed a hole through the kickboard to nest inside the organ; she refused to use the pedals nearby.From the entry kickboard
- It looked like something an animal had dug up and gnawed on.2015, Bill Porter, “Final Leg”, in South of the Clouds: Travels in Southwest China, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 257. From the entry Panchihhua
- The adjacent alleys were choked with tethered wagons, the teams reversed and nuzzling gnawed corn-ears over the tail-boards.1931, William Faulkner, Sanctuary, Vintage, published 1993, page 111. From the entry team
Meaning of gnaw
- verb To bite something persistently, especially something tough.
- verb To produce excessive anxiety or worry.
- verb To corrode; to fret away; to waste.
Questions about the past tense of gnaw
- What is the past tense of gnaw?
- The past tense of gnaw is gnawed.
- What is the past participle of gnaw?
- The past participle of gnaw is gnawed.
- Is gnaw a regular or irregular verb?
- Gnaw is a regular verb: its past tense adds -ed.
- Is gnew correct?
- gnew is marked dialectal in Wiktionary. The usual past tense of gnaw is gnawed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: gnaw (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 gnaw.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/gnaw. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.