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Past tense of “hear”

🔊 To notice sounds with your ears.

Number 31 of 175 by frequency, well inside the everyday core, and the past and the participle are both heard. Worth learning properly rather than recognising vaguely.

Mistakes people make with “hear”

Not “heared”. Hear does not take -ed — the past simple is heard, however regular it feels to add the ending.

Say it right

The past is heard, which rhymes with bird — not with the base. The spelling keeps the ear but the sound does not.

Do not confuse it with…

Hear happens to you; listen to is something you choose to do. You heard a noise, but you listened to a podcast.

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.

Two forms, learned as one word

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, heard. Half the work disappears: learn hear · heard and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — I heard a strange noise last night. is the past simple, Have you heard the news? is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

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

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: