Home → Irregular verbs → sell

Past tense of “sell”

🏷️ To give something to someone for money.

Number 60 of 175 by frequency, well inside the everyday core, and the past and the participle are both sold. Worth learning properly rather than recognising vaguely.

Mistakes people make with “sell”

Not “selled”. Sell does not take -ed — the past simple is sold, 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.

ell becomes old

sell → sold. Only two verbs in everyday English do this — tell · told and sell · sold — which makes the pair easy to learn together and easy to mix up with nothing else.

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, sold. Half the work disappears: learn sell · sold and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — They sold their house last year. is the past simple, He has sold his old car. is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: