Past tense of sift
regular verb
The past tense of sift is sifted. The past participle is also sifted.
Forms of sift
| Base form (V1) | sift /sɪft/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | sifted |
| Past participle (V3) | sifted |
| Present participle | sifting |
| Third person singular | sifts /sɪfts/ |
Sifted in a sentence
- Coarsely milled maize is termed cornmeal, but when finely milled and sifted it is called corn flour.From the entry milled
- The recipe called for sifted flour so it would be fluffier.From the entry sifted
- Inside the atmosphere was rank and caliginous: fumes rose from puddles, groans sifted through the shadows.1981, T[homas] Coraghessan Boyle, “The Niger”, in Water Music, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, →ISBN; republished London: Granta Books…. From the entry caliginous
- Nocake was made of selected Indian corn, parched in hot ashes, then well sifted and thoroughly pulverized.1920 November 1, George S. Bryan, “Good Eating in Puritan Days”, in The Mentor, volume 8, number 17 (number 213 overall), New York, N.Y.…. From the entry nocake
- Moreover, Caillette experienced a superior sadness, sifted through years of infestivity and gloom.1903, Frederic Stewart Isham, Under the Rose (2009 reprint), p. 70. From the entry infestivity
Meaning of sift
- verb To sieve or strain (something).
- verb To separate or scatter (things) as if by sieving.
- verb To scrutinize (someone or something) carefully so as to find the truth.
Questions about the past tense of sift
- What is the past tense of sift?
- The past tense of sift is sifted.
- What is the past participle of sift?
- The past participle of sift is sifted.
- Is sift a regular or irregular verb?
- Sift is a regular verb: its past tense adds -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: sift (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 sift.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/sift. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.