Past tense of kneel
irregular verb
The past tense of kneel is knelt or kneeled. The past participle is also knelt or kneeled.
Forms of kneel
| Base form (V1) | kneel /niːl/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | knelt /nɛlt/ kneeled /niːld/ |
| Past participle (V3) | knelt /nɛlt/ kneeled /niːld/ |
| Present participle | kneeling /ˈniːlɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | kneels /niːlz/ |
Knelt and kneeled in a sentence
- She knelt the doll to fit it into the box.
- He took the wife in his car to the piney woods outside town, and knelt her down.2011, Joseph T. Wells, Fraud Fighter: My Fables and Foibles, page 201
- The mother and father knelt at the cribside.From the entry cribside
- The mother and father knelt at the cradleside.From the entry cradleside
- She got up, pulled the prayer rug out from under her bed, and knelt down on it.2017, Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire, Bloomsbury (2018), page 43. From the entry prayer rug
Meaning of kneel
- verb To rest on one's bent knees, sometimes only one; to move to such a position.
- verb To sink down so that the entrance is level with the pavement, making it easier for passengers to enter.
- verb To cause to kneel.
Verbs like kneel
Questions about the past tense of kneel
- What is the past tense of kneel?
- The past tense of kneel is knelt or kneeled.
- What is the past participle of kneel?
- The past participle of kneel is knelt or kneeled.
- Is kneel a regular or irregular verb?
- Kneel is an irregular verb: its past tense is not formed with -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: kneel (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 kneel.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/kneel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.