Past tense of want
regular verb
The past tense of want is wanted. The past participle is also wanted.
Forms of want
| Base form (V1) | want /wɒnt/ |
|---|---|
| Past tense (V2) | wanted /ˈwɒn.tɪd/ |
| Past participle (V3) | wanted /ˈwɒn.tɪd/ |
| Present participle | wanting /ˈwɑntɪŋ/ |
| Third person singular | wants /wɑnts/ |
Wanted in a sentence
- What do you want to eat? I want you to leave. I never wanted to go back to live with my mother.
- He said that if you wanted to do anything for them, you must rule them, not pamper them.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC
- That TV programme that you wanted to watch is on now.From the entry on
- We just wanted to take off a few thou, which we easily did with fine sandpaper.From the entry thou
- "Did you visit the museum?" "I wanted to, but it was closed."From the entry to
Meaning of want
- verb To wish for or desire (something); to feel a need or desire for; to crave, hanker, or demand.
- verb To make it easy or tempting to do something undesirable, or to make it hard or challenging to refrain from doing it.
- verb To wish, desire, or demand to see, have the presence of or do business with.
Questions about the past tense of want
- What is the past tense of want?
- The past tense of want is wanted.
- What is the past participle of want?
- The past participle of want is wanted.
- Is want a regular or irregular verb?
- Want is a regular verb: its past tense adds -ed.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: want (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 want.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past-tense/want. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.