Past tense of steal
irregular verb
The past tense of steal is stole. The past participle is stolen.
Forms of steal
| Base form (V1) | steal /stiːl/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | stole /stəʊl/ |
| Past participle (V3) | stolen /ˈstəʊ.ln̩/ |
| Present participle | stealing /ˈstiːlɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | steals /stiːlz/ |
Stole and stolen in a sentence
- Three irreplaceable paintings were stolen from the gallery.
- The problem is the two bicycles stolen from us.
- We think that you stole the tarts. — That I did not!From the entry that
- He stole a car and changed the plates as soon as he could.From the entry plate
- The police say I stole the car, but I never did it.From the entry never
Meaning of steal
- verb To take illegally, or without the owner's permission, something owned by someone else without intending to return it.
- verb To appropriate without giving credit or acknowledgement.
- verb To get or effect surreptitiously or artfully.
Questions about the past tense of steal
- What is the past tense of steal?
- The past tense of steal is stole.
- What is the past participle of steal?
- The past participle of steal is stolen.
- Is steal a regular or irregular verb?
- Steal is an irregular verb: its past tense is not formed with -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: steal (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 steal.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/steal. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.