Home → Irregular verbs → hold

Past tense of “hold”

🫴 To keep something in your hands.

Number 53 of 175 by frequency, well inside the everyday core, and the past and the participle are both held. Worth learning properly rather than recognising vaguely.

Mistakes people make with “hold”

Not “holded”. Hold does not take -ed — the past simple is held, however regular it feels to add the ending.

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: hold → held, o → e. Nothing is added and nothing is dropped.

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, held. Half the work disappears: learn hold · held and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — She held the baby gently. is the past simple, They have held three meetings this week. is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

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

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: