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Past tense of “shine”

☀️ To give out light.

Number 138 of 175 by frequency, so one of the rarer ones: the past and the participle are both shone. You will meet it in books and set phrases more than in conversation, and it can wait.

Say it right

British English says shone to rhyme with gone; American English rhymes it with bone.

British and American English

British English prefers the short -t ending, undefined; American English regularises it to shined. Both are correct, and a whole group behaves this way — burn, learn, dream, smell, spell — so learning one teaches you the rest.

Only the vowel moves

The consonants stay exactly where they are and the vowel changes underneath them: shine → shone, i-e → o-e. Nothing is added and nothing is dropped.

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, shone. Half the work disappears: learn shine · shone and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — The sun shone all day yesterday. is the past simple, The moon has shone through the night. is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

This is worth hearing rather than reading. Say shine and shone one after the other — the shape of your mouth changes, the word does not.

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: