Verb forms
Base form
/fiːl/
Past Simple
/felt/
Past Participle
/felt/
Example sentences
Base form · feel
- I feel more energetic after morning exercise.
Past Simple · felt
- He felt nervous before the job interview.
- Did you feel it before lunch?
- I felt it as soon as I possibly could.
- We felt it together earlier this week.
Past Participle · felt
- She has never felt happier in her life.
- By the time we arrived, they had felt everything.
- We have never felt anything quite like it.
- He has felt it many times before.
Common collocations
feel free
to be welcome to do something
feel like
to want to do something
Key tenses
| Present Simple | Past Simple | Present Perfect |
|---|---|---|
I feel he / she / it feels | I felt | I have felt |
| Present Continuous:I am feeling · he / she / it is feeling | ||
Grammar guide
The verb "feel" follows the ABB pattern: the past simple and past participle share one form ("felt"), while the base form ("feel") is different. ABB is the most common pattern among English irregular verbs — roughly half of all irregulars fall here, so mastering this group pays dividends across the whole language.
Use the past simple "felt" to talk about a completed action or event at a definite moment in the past. It stands alone as the main verb — no auxiliary is needed. Common accompanying time expressions include yesterday, last week, ago, and when: "She felt the whole report by herself." The action is seen as finished and anchored to a specific past time.
The past participle "felt" always works together with an auxiliary verb. It appears in: (1) the present perfect with have/has — "I have felt this several times before"; (2) the past perfect with had — "By the time we called, they had already felt"; (3) passive voice — "The decision was felt by the board." Never use "felt" as a standalone past-tense verb without an auxiliary.
Memory tip: because "felt" and "felt" are the same, you only need to memorise one past form. Many ABB verbs follow recognisable sound shifts — a large group ends in -ought (bring→brought, buy→bought, catch→caught, fight→fought, seek→sought, teach→taught, think→thought), and another group shows a vowel shift plus -t (feel→felt, keep→kept, leave→left, mean→meant, sleep→slept). Identifying which sub-group "feel" belongs to can make the form easier to remember long-term.
Quick quiz
Which sentence is correct?
Conjugation pattern
The past simple and the past participle share the same form.