was / were / went / said, came: Common words you see every day that actually hide high-frequency irregular past tense verbs

was / were / went / said, came: Common Sight Words You See Every Day Actually Hide High-Frequency Irregular Past Tense Verbs

You must have seen the words was, went, and said before—they are among the most frequently occurring words in English. Many learners encounter them every day without making one key connection: these common sight words are themselves the irregular past tense of verbs.

In other words, you already "recognize what they look like." Now, you just need to connect them to the next level: whose past tense they are. Today, we will pull out these past tense forms hidden in common sight words and memorize them all at once. Once you make this connection, your brain won't get stuck when you want to talk about things that happened in the past.

What is the Irregular Past Tense?

To change a verb into the past tense in English, the most common rule is to add -ed to the end of the word:

• I walk. → I walked. (I walk. → I walked.)
• She plays. → She played. (She plays. → She played.)

There is a group of the most commonly used verbs that simply do not follow this rule. They have their own past tense forms, completely changing into a different look. These are called irregular verbs:

• go → went ✓, the correct spelling will never be goed ✗
• come → came ✓, the correct spelling will never be comed ✗

The interesting part is that almost all of these irregular verbs are the most high-frequency verbs in English. Therefore, their past tense forms (went, came, said...) naturally become sight words that you see every single day.

High-Frequency Irregular Past Tense Comparison Table Hidden in Sight Words

The past tense forms below are all included in high-frequency word lists that are essential for learning sight words. Looking at the base form and the past tense side-by-side makes the relationship clear immediately:

• be → was / were: The past tense of am and is is was; the past tense of are is were.
• have → had: I have → I had.
• say → said: Note the pronunciation; say is pronounced /seɪ/, and when it becomes said, the vowel shortens, and the whole word is pronounced /sed/.
• make → made: A classic example of removing the e and lengthening the vowel.
• come → came: The vowel changes from o to a.
• go → went: Completely changes into another word, the most unique one.
• find → found: i becomes ou.
• get → got: A short, simple vowel change.
• see → saw: The vowel changes from /iː/ to /ɔː/, and the spelling changes with it.
• think → thought: The spelling is completely replaced, and the ending rhyme is pronounced /ɔːt/, just like bought and brought.

Let's see how they look in sentences:

• I was tired last night. (I was very tired last night.)
• We were at home all day. (We were at home all day.)
• She said hello to me. (She said hello to me.)
• He went to school by bus. (He went to school by bus.)
• They came to my house yesterday. (They came to my house yesterday.)
• I found my keys under the bed. (I found my keys under the bed.)
• We saw a movie on Sunday. (We saw a movie on Sunday.)

was or were? A Simple Rule of Thumb

There are two past tense forms of be, which is where beginners most often get stuck. The trick is to look at whether the subject is singular or plural:

• Use was for singular subjects (he / she / it)
• Use were for plural subjects (you / we / they)

It is even easier to remember when compared to the present tense: if the present tense uses is, the past tense uses was; if the present tense uses are, the past tense uses were.

• He is happy. → He was happy. ✓ (He was happy.)
• They are happy. → They were happy. ✓ (They were happy.)
• They was happy. ✗

Pay special attention to I: its present tense is am, which is not in the is / are comparison above. Remember—the past tense of am is also was, so I uses was just like he / she / it.

• I was at the party. ✓ (I was at the party.)
• I were at the party. ✗

A Takeaway Method: Think of the "Base Form" First

When you want to talk about the past but are unsure of how to change the verb, try this three-step test:

1. First, think of the base form of the action (for example, "to go" is go).
2. Ask yourself: Is it one of those high-frequency irregular verbs? If so, change it directly to its specific past tense form (go → went).
3. If the base form is not in this group, confidently add -ed (for example, want → wanted).

The benefit of this method is that you don't have to memorize a whole table every time. As long as you memorize "these ten most common ones," you can handle most other situations by simply adding -ed to regular verbs.

As a quick reminder of a common trap: when did is already in the sentence, the verb that follows must return to its base form.

• Did you go to school? ✓ (Did you go to school?)
• Did you went to school? ✗

Since the past tense information is already carried by did, the verb just needs to stay in its base form—the past tense is only marked once. This is part of the overall grammar of the "past tense," and it is worth taking extra time to master.

Putting It Back into the "Deconstruct Words to Learn Vocabulary" Framework

This article is part of the "Deconstruct Words to Learn Vocabulary" series. In the main article, Deconstruct Words with Prefixes, Roots, and Suffixes, we talked about the three angles of deconstructing words: prefixes change the meaning, roots determine the core, and suffixes change the part of speech.

Irregular past tense is a bit special. It relies on the verb itself "changing its face" rather than adding a suffix. Therefore, the strategy for dealing with it is also different: it is most effective to memorize this set of the highest frequency "faces" as a whole group. Because they appear so frequently, once you master them, your reading and listening will immediately become much smoother.

In other words, the sight word list helps you filter out the "most worth-remembering-first" batch of irregular past tense verbs. You don't have to memorize hundreds of irregular verbs right from the start. Just mastering these ten sight-word versions already covers the vast majority of past tense sentences in daily English. Later in this series, we will also talk about how the suffixes -ed and -ing change a word, so remember to come back and take a look.

How to Practice on Loopy

Knowing the rules is only the first step; truly remembering them depends on "encountering them time and again." Loopy helps you turn these high-frequency past tense verbs into muscle memory:

• Leveled Courses: In A1–B1 dialogue content, words like was, went, said, came will naturally appear repeatedly, allowing you to become familiar with them in real contexts and learn from living sentences rather than memorizing isolated words.
• Forgetting Curve Review: For the sight words you have encountered in your practice, the system will schedule review times based on the forgetting curve, appearing again just as you are about to forget them, turning short-term impressions into long-term memory.
• Listening, Speaking, and Shadowing: say is pronounced /seɪ/, said is pronounced /sed/, and the vowels of see and saw are also completely different. These pronunciation details that cannot be learned just by looking at spelling are most effectively practiced by speaking aloud with native speakers.
• Dictionary: When you encounter an uncertain past tense, simply open it to check the pronunciation and example sentences, immediately reinforcing the "base form → past tense" connection.

Starting from the sight words you already recognize, connect the past tense forms hidden inside them one by one. You will find that talking about the past is actually not that difficult. You can do it.