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Past tense of “throw”

🏈 To send something through the air with your hand.

Number 57 of 175 by frequency, well inside the everyday core, and three separate forms to keep apart. Worth learning properly rather than recognising vaguely.

Mistakes people make with “throw”

Not “throwed”. Throw does not take -ed — the past simple is threw, however regular it feels to add the ending.

Not “have threw”. After have, has or had the verb switches to its third form: I have thrown, never I have threw. This one survives into quite advanced English, so it is worth over-learning.

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.

ew in the past, own in the participle

Two endings, in a fixed order: the past simple takes threw, the participle takes thrown. Once you have heard know · knew · known, this whole group falls into place.

Because the two forms rhyme with such different words, they are hard to mix up in speech and easy to mix up in writing. Threw stands alone; thrown waits for have — Someone has thrown litter on the street.

The same pattern — ew → own — runs through 7 verbs: