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Past tense of “light”

🕯️ To make something start burning; to give light.

Number 97 of 175 by frequency — common in reading and television, less so in your own speech, and the past and the participle are both lit. Recognising it is the priority.

British and American English

Lit for flames and lamps; lighted is older and now mostly used as an adjective, as in a lighted candle.

Two forms, learned as one word

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, lit. Half the work disappears: learn light · lit and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — She lit a candle in the dark. is the past simple, He has lit a fire in the fireplace. is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

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

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: