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Past tense of “get”

📥 To receive or obtain something.

Number 6 of 175 by frequency — unavoidable in ordinary English, and the past and the participle are both got. If you learn twenty irregular verbs, this is one of them.

Mistakes people make with “get”

Not “getted”. Get does not take -ed — the past simple is got, however regular it feels to add the ending.

British and American English

American English keeps a separate participle, gotten, for the sense of acquiring or becoming: he has gotten better. British English uses got throughout. The one exception both share is have got meaning “possess”, where gotten is wrong on either side of the Atlantic.

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.

Only the vowel moves

The consonants stay exactly where they are and the vowel changes underneath them: get → got, e → o. Nothing is added and nothing is dropped.

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, got. Half the work disappears: learn get · got and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — I got your message this morning. is the past simple, It has got much colder this week. is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

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

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: