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Past tense of “mean”

🧭 To have a particular sense or intention.

Number 34 of 175 by frequency, well inside the everyday core, and the past and the participle are both meant. Worth learning properly rather than recognising vaguely.

Mistakes people make with “mean”

Not “meaned”. Mean does not take -ed — the past simple is meant, 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.

A -d that hardened into a -t

Look at the last letter. Where a regular verb would take -ed, mean takes a bare -t: meant. 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, meant. Half the work disappears: learn mean · meant and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — I meant no harm when I said that. is the past simple, She has always meant well. 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: