Past tense of pretend
regular verb
The past tense of pretend is pretended. The past participle is also pretended.
Forms of pretend
| Base form (V1) | pretend /pɹəˈtɛnd/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | pretended /pɹɪˈtɛndɪd/ |
| Past participle (V3) | pretended /pɹɪˈtɛndɪd/ |
| Present participle | pretending |
| Third person singular | pretends |
Pretended in a sentence
- To get into the club, he pretended to be over 18.
- She didn't have a real piano to play, so she just pretended.
- The man joined a group of bergies sleeping near the police station and pretended to be one of them when confronted by the rangers.From the entry bergie
- The kids' involvement was unfortunately more of a spanner in the works than a helpful contribution toward Daddy's progress on the task, but he gamely pretended to be thankful anyway.From the entry spanner in the works
- I found a little corner to stand in and pretended to sip my own louched absinthe.2012, Heather E. Hutsell, chapter 1, in Blood Mettle, [s.l.]: Fatty Baby Cat Publishing, →ISBN, page 2. From the entry louche
Meaning of pretend
- verb To speak or behave so as to give a false or simulated appearance.
- verb To engage in make-believe.
- verb To feign, affect (a state, quality, etc.).
Questions about the past tense of pretend
- What is the past tense of pretend?
- The past tense of pretend is pretended.
- What is the past participle of pretend?
- The past participle of pretend is pretended.
- Is pretend a regular or irregular verb?
- Pretend is a regular verb: its past tense adds -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: pretend (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 pretend.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/pretend. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.