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Past tense of “lean”

🗼 To rest against something; to bend to one side.

Number 111 of 175 by frequency — common in reading and television, less so in your own speech, and the past and the participle are both leant. Recognising it is the priority.

British and American English

British English prefers the short -t ending, leant; American English regularises it to leaned. Both are correct, and a whole group behaves this way — burn, learn, dream, smell, spell — so learning one teaches you the rest.

A -d that hardened into a -t

Look at the last letter. Where a regular verb would take -ed, lean takes a bare -t: leant. That is not an exception so much as a shortcut — English used to voice that ending, stopped bothering after certain sounds, and the spelling froze that way.

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, leant. Half the work disappears: learn lean · leant and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — She leant against the wall and waited. is the past simple, The tower has leant for centuries. is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

The same shortcut produced built, sent, spent, slept and kept. Recognise the -t and you have recognised a whole group.

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: