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Past tense of “lose”

🕳️ To no longer have something; to not win.

Number 40 of 175 by frequency, well inside the everyday core, and the past and the participle are both lost. Worth learning properly rather than recognising vaguely.

Mistakes people make with “lose”

Not “losed”. Lose does not take -ed — the past simple is lost, however regular it feels to add the ending.

Say it right

Rhymes with news, and it has one o. Loose, with two, rhymes with goose and means “not tight”.

Do not confuse it with…

One o, and it rhymes with news. Loose with two is an adjective meaning the opposite of tight, and is not a form of this verb at all.

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, lost. Half the work disappears: learn lose · lost and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — I lost my wallet last week. is the past simple, She has lost her keys again. is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

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

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: