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Past tense of “strike”

⚡ To hit something hard and suddenly.

Number 96 of 175 by frequency — common in reading and television, less so in your own speech, and the past and the participle are both struck. Recognising it is the priority.

Mistakes people make with “strike”

Not “striked”. Strike does not take -ed — the past simple is struck, however regular it feels to add the ending.

British and American English

The ordinary participle is struck. Stricken survives only in fixed phrases about being afflicted — grief-stricken, stricken from the record.

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.

Two forms, learned as one word

The past simple and the past participle are the same word, struck. Half the work disappears: learn strike · struck and you have the whole verb. What is left is telling the two jobs apart — Lightning struck the old oak. is the past simple, An idea has just struck me. is the perfect, and have does all the signalling.

There is no tidy rule connecting strike to struck — this is a verb you memorise as a pair and stop analysing. The consolation is that it is a pair and not a trio: striked is the only wrong answer worth guarding against.

The same pattern — twins — runs through 73 verbs: