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Past tense of “cling”

🧲 To hold on to something very tightly.

Number 128 of 175 by frequency, so one of the rarer ones: the past and the participle are both clung. You will meet it in books and set phrases more than in conversation, and it can wait.

Mistakes people make with “cling”

Not “clinged”. Cling does not take -ed — the past simple is clung, however regular it feels to add the ending.

Only the vowel moves

The consonants stay exactly where they are and the vowel changes underneath them: cling → clung, i → u. Nothing is added and nothing is dropped.

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, clung. Half the work disappears: learn cling · clung and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — The child clung to his mother. is the past simple, The smell has clung to my clothes. is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

This is worth hearing rather than reading. Say cling and clung one after the other — the shape of your mouth changes, the word does not.

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: