Past tense of happen
regular verb
The past tense of happen is happened. The past participle is also happened.
Forms of happen
| Base form (V1) | happen /ˈhæpən/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | happened /ˈhæpənd/ |
| Past participle (V3) | happened /ˈhæpənd/ |
| Present participle | happening /ˈhæpɪnɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | happens /ˈhæpənz/ |
Happened in a sentence
- Let me tell you how it happened.
- It happened that a police car was passing my house just at that moment.
- It must be broken, because I pressed the button and nothing happened.From the entry because
- You need to write down what happened while it's still fresh in your mind.From the entry down
- That's when we burn the mark, and we'll be gone before he knows what happened.From the entry burn
Meaning of happen
- verb To occur or take place.
- verb To happen to; to befall.
- verb To do or occur by chance or unexpectedly.
Questions about the past tense of happen
- What is the past tense of happen?
- The past tense of happen is happened.
- What is the past participle of happen?
- The past participle of happen is happened.
- Is happen a regular or irregular verb?
- Happen is a regular verb: its past tense adds -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: happen (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 happen.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/happen. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.