What is the past tense of grind?

The past simple of "grind" is "ground". Example: He ground the coffee beans this morning.

What is the past participle of grind?

The past participle of "grind" is "ground". Example: The mill has ground grain for a century.

Is "grind" a regular or an irregular verb?

"grind" is irregular: its past forms are not made by adding -ed, so "grinded" is not a word. It belongs to the twins pattern.

Home → Irregular verbs → grind

Past tense of “grind”

Base form

grind

Past simple

ground

Past participle

ground

☕ To crush something into powder.

Number 135 of 175 by frequency, so one of the rarer ones: the past and the participle are both ground. You will meet it in books and set phrases more than in conversation, and it can wait.

Mistakes people make with “grind”

Not “grinded”. Grind does not take -ed — the past simple is ground, however regular it feels to add the ending.

Two forms, learned as one word

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, ground. Half the work disappears: learn grind · ground and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — He ground the coffee beans this morning. is the past simple, The mill has ground grain for a century. is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

There is no tidy rule connecting grind to ground — this is a verb you memorise as a pair and stop analysing. The consolation is that it is a pair and not a trio: grinded is the only wrong answer worth guarding against.

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs:

have say get make find tell leave feel keep hear

Practise it

Irregular verb exercises Past simple exercises

Drill grind and 174 more on your phone

Spaced repetition, offline, free. What the app does →

iPhone Android

← forgive All 175 verbs kneel →