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Past tense of “buy”
🛒 To get something by paying money for it.
Number 29 of 175 by frequency, well inside the everyday core, and the past and the participle are both bought. Worth learning properly rather than recognising vaguely.
Mistakes people make with “buy”
Not “buyed”. Buy does not take -ed — the past simple is bought, however regular it feels to add the ending.
Phrases you will actually hear
These are worth learning whole. A verb sticks far better inside a phrase somebody would really say than on its own in a table.
Unrecognisable base, predictable ending
Buy and bought barely look related, and that is normal for this group. What holds it together is the ending: -ought or -aught, shared by think, buy, bring, catch, teach, seek and fight.
The good news is that the past and the participle are identical — bought covers both — so there is one strange word to learn rather than two. The gh is silent; it is a fossil from a sound English lost centuries ago.
- Past simple: They bought a new house last month.
- Past participle: I have just bought some bread.
The same pattern — the -ought gang — runs through 8 verbs:
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