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Past tense of “spread”
🧈 To open something out or cover a surface with it.
Number 77 of 175 by frequency — common in reading and television, less so in your own speech, and all three forms are the same word. Recognising it is the priority.
Mistakes people make with “spread”
Not “spreaded”. Spread does not take -ed — the past simple is spread, 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.
One word doing three jobs
Nothing changes. spread is the base form, the past simple and the past participle, which sounds like a gift until you notice the catch: the word itself no longer tells you what time you are talking about. Only the rest of the sentence does.
I spread it every day · I spread it yesterday · I have spread it before — identical verb, three different times. Learners often reach for spreaded to make the past feel like a past. It is not a word.
Most verbs in this group already end in -t or -d, which is roughly where the -ed ending would have landed anyway. English simply stopped bothering.
- Past simple: She spread butter on the bread.
- Past participle: The news has spread quickly.
The same pattern — one form fits all — runs through 22 verbs:
Practise it
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