Home → Irregular verbs → let
Past tense of “let”
🟢 To allow something to happen.
Number 33 of 175 by frequency, well inside the everyday core, and all three forms are the same word. Worth learning properly rather than recognising vaguely.
Mistakes people make with “let”
Not “letted”. Let does not take -ed — the past simple is let, 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.
One word doing three jobs
Nothing changes. let is the base form, the past simple and the past participle, which sounds like a gift until you notice the catch: the word itself no longer tells you what time you are talking about. Only the rest of the sentence does.
I let it every day · I let it yesterday · I have let it before — identical verb, three different times. Learners often reach for letted to make the past feel like a past. It is not a word.
Most verbs in this group already end in -t or -d, which is roughly where the -ed ending would have landed anyway. English simply stopped bothering.
- Past simple: She let me borrow her bike yesterday.
- Past participle: He has let the dog out already.
The same pattern — one form fits all — runs through 22 verbs:
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