Home → Irregular verbs → stick

Past tense of “stick”

📌 To fix something with glue; to be unable to move.

Number 92 of 175 by frequency — common in reading and television, less so in your own speech, and the past and the participle are both stuck. Recognising it is the priority.

Mistakes people make with “stick”

Not “sticked”. Stick does not take -ed — the past simple is stuck, 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.

Only the vowel moves

The consonants stay exactly where they are and the vowel changes underneath them: stick → stuck, i → u. Nothing is added and nothing is dropped.

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, stuck. Half the work disappears: learn stick · stuck and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — He stuck the note on the fridge. is the past simple, The car has stuck in the mud. is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

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

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: