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Past tense of “deal”

🃏 To give out cards; to handle a problem.

Number 83 of 175 by frequency — common in reading and television, less so in your own speech, and the past and the participle are both dealt. Recognising it is the priority.

Mistakes people make with “deal”

Not “dealed”. Deal does not take -ed — the past simple is dealt, 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.

A -d that hardened into a -t

Look at the last letter. Where a regular verb would take -ed, deal takes a bare -t: dealt. That is not an exception so much as a shortcut — English used to voice that ending, stopped bothering after certain sounds, and the spelling froze that way.

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, dealt. Half the work disappears: learn deal · dealt and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — She dealt with the problem quickly. is the past simple, I have dealt with worse. is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

The same shortcut produced built, sent, spent, slept and kept. Recognise the -t and you have recognised a whole group.

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: