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Past tense of “grow”

🌱 To become bigger; to develop.

Number 56 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 “grow”

Not “growed”. Grow does not take -ed — the past simple is grew, however regular it feels to add the ending.

Not “have grew”. After have, has or had the verb switches to its third form: I have grown, never I have grew. This one survives into quite advanced English, so it is worth over-learning.

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 grew, the participle takes grown. 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. Grew stands alone; grown waits for have — The city has grown a lot.

The same pattern — ew → own — runs through 7 verbs: