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Past tense of “sink”
⚓ To go down under water.
Number 98 of 175 by frequency — common in reading and television, less so in your own speech, and the vowel walks i → a → u. Recognising it is the priority.
Mistakes people make with “sink”
Not “sinked”. Sink does not take -ed — the past simple is sank, however regular it feels to add the ending.
Not “have sank”. After have, has or had the verb switches to its third form: I have sunk, never I have sank. This one survives into quite advanced English, so it is worth over-learning.
British and American English
Both sank and sunk occur as the past, with sank preferred in careful writing. The participle is sunk for everyone.
The vowel walks i → a → u
Only one letter is doing the work. sink becomes sank becomes sunk, and everything around the vowel stays where it is.
Say the three aloud and you can hear the staircase: i → a → u. This is the oldest verb pattern in the language, inherited from Germanic, and it is the one group where guessing actually works — meet a new verb of this shape and you can usually predict its forms.
The mistake to avoid is stopping halfway: I have sank instead of I have sunk. The u form belongs after have.
- Past simple: The ship sank in 1912.
- Past participle: The old ferry has sunk to the bottom.
The same pattern — i → a → u — runs through 8 verbs:
Practise it
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