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Past tense of “fly”
✈️ To move through the air.
Number 47 of 175 by frequency, well inside the everyday core, and three separate forms to keep apart. Worth learning properly rather than recognising vaguely.
Mistakes people make with “fly”
Not “flied”. Fly does not take -ed — the past simple is flew, however regular it feels to add the ending.
Not “have flew”. After have, has or had the verb switches to its third form: I have flown, never I have flew. This one survives into quite advanced English, so it is worth over-learning.
Say it right
The past is flew, rhyming with blue. Do not reach for fled — that belongs to flee, a different verb about escaping.
Do not confuse it with…
Flew is about flight; fled is about escaping. They look related and are not.
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.
ew in the past, own in the participle
Two endings, in a fixed order: the past simple takes flew, the participle takes flown. Once you have heard know · knew · known, this whole group falls into place.
Because the two forms rhyme with such different words, they are hard to mix up in speech and easy to mix up in writing. Flew stands alone; flown waits for have — This pilot has flown all over the world.
- Past simple: We flew to Rome last summer.
The same pattern — ew → own — runs through 7 verbs:
Practise it
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