Past tense of overcome
irregular verb
The past tense of overcome is overcame. The past participle is overcome.
Forms of overcome
| Base form (V1) | overcome /ˌəʊ.vəˈkʌm/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | overcame /ˌəʊ.vəˈkeɪm/ |
| Past participle (V3) | overcome /ˌəʊ.vəˈkʌm/ |
| Present participle | overcoming |
| Third person singular | overcomes |
Overcame in a sentence
- And if the arts of humbleness failed him, he overcame you by sheer impudence.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter II, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
- It's admirable that Shelley overcame her handicap and excelled in her work.From the entry admirable
- A wave of emotion overcame her when she thought about her son who was killed in battle.From the entry wave
- Chrysalism overcame me, the feeling of amniotic tranquility you get when experiencing a thunderstorm from indoors.2015, Johnny Close, Eco-Lonely, page 113. From the entry chrysalism
- For example, I once had a client who overcame an eating-disorder early in her adolescence.2014, Melissa Young-Dorn, How to Find Your Super Awesome Sassy Self! A Modern Woman’s Guide to Living a Less-Stressed Life, Balboa Press…. From the entry eating-disorder
Meaning of overcome
- verb To surmount (a physical or abstract obstacle); to prevail over, to get the better of.
- verb To prevail.
- verb To recover from (a difficulty), to get over.
Verbs like overcome
Questions about the past tense of overcome
- What is the past tense of overcome?
- The past tense of overcome is overcame.
- What is the past participle of overcome?
- The past participle of overcome is overcome.
- Is overcome a regular or irregular verb?
- Overcome is an irregular verb: its past tense is not formed with -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: overcome (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 overcome.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/overcome. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.