Past tense of shrink
irregular verb
The past tense of shrink is shrank. The past participle is shrunk or shrunken.
Forms of shrink
| Base form (V1) | shrink /ˈʃɹɪŋk/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | shrank /ʃɹæŋk/ |
| Past participle (V3) | shrunk /ˈʃɹʌŋk/ shrunken /ˈʃɹʌŋkən/ |
| Present participle | shrinking /ˈʃɹɪŋkɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | shrinks |
Shrank and shrunk in a sentence
- The dryer shrank my sweater.
- Since 1982, it has shrunk by 250 meters.2018, VOA Learning English > China's Melting Glacier Brings Visitors, Adds to Climate Concerns
- When I deduped my music database, it shrank by more than half!From the entry dedupe
- The lake shrank because of rapid evaporation.From the entry evaporation
- As southeast Asia's forests were felled, the rhino's habitat shrank and became fragmented.2014, Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Picador, →ISBN, page 219. From the entry fell
Meaning of shrink
- verb To cause to become smaller.
- verb To become smaller; to contract.
- verb To cower or flinch.
Verbs like shrink
Questions about the past tense of shrink
- What is the past tense of shrink?
- The past tense of shrink is shrank.
- What is the past participle of shrink?
- The past participle of shrink is shrunk or shrunken.
- Is shrink a regular or irregular verb?
- Shrink is an irregular verb: its past tense is not formed with -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: shrink (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 shrink.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/shrink. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.