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Past tense of “burst”
🎈 To break open suddenly.
Number 106 of 175 by frequency — common in reading and television, less so in your own speech, and all three forms are the same word. Recognising it is the priority.
Mistakes people make with “burst”
Not “bursted”. Burst does not take -ed — the past simple is burst, however regular it feels to add the ending.
One word doing three jobs
Nothing changes. burst is the base form, the past simple and the past participle, which sounds like a gift until you notice the catch: the word itself no longer tells you what time you are talking about. Only the rest of the sentence does.
I burst it every day · I burst it yesterday · I have burst it before — identical verb, three different times. Learners often reach for bursted to make the past feel like a past. It is not a word.
Most verbs in this group already end in -t or -d, which is roughly where the -ed ending would have landed anyway. English simply stopped bothering.
- Past simple: The balloon burst with a bang.
- Past participle: A pipe has burst in the basement.
The same pattern — one form fits all — runs through 22 verbs:
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