Past tense of seek
irregular verb
The past tense of seek is sought. The past participle is also sought.
Forms of seek
| Base form (V1) | seek /ˈsiːk/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | sought /sɔːt/ |
| Past participle (V3) | sought /sɔːt/ |
| Present participle | seeking /ˈsiː.kɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | seeks /siːks/ |
Less standard forms: seeked (nonstandard).
Sought in a sentence
- I sought my fortune on the goldfields.
- When the alarm went off I sought the exit in a panic.
- He sought the help of an alchemist regarding remedies to ward off the eye.From the entry eye
- They sought out cost adders with an eye toward eliminating them.From the entry adder
- His speech sought to enlace both the traditional and modern values.From the entry enlace
Meaning of seek
- verb To try to find; to look for; to search for.
- verb To try to acquire or gain; to strive after.
- verb To try to reach or come to (a location).
Verbs like seek
Questions about the past tense of seek
- What is the past tense of seek?
- The past tense of seek is sought.
- What is the past participle of seek?
- The past participle of seek is sought.
- Is seek a regular or irregular verb?
- Seek is an irregular verb: its past tense is not formed with -ed.
- Is seeked correct?
- seeked is marked nonstandard in Wiktionary. The usual past tense of seek is sought.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: seek (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 seek.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/seek. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.