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All irregular verbsIrregular Verbs

fit

/fɪt/

be the right size

Verb forms

Base form

fit

/fɪt/

Past Simple

fit

Past Participle

fit

Example sentences

Base form · fit

  • These shoes fit me perfectly.

Past Simple · fit

  • The dress fit her like a glove.
  • I fit it as soon as I possibly could.
  • We fit it together earlier this week.
  • She fit without any hesitation.

Past Participle · fit

  • The kitchen has been fit with new cupboards.
  • We have never fit anything quite like it.
  • He has fit it many times before.
  • I have already fit it more than once.

Key tenses

Present SimplePast SimplePresent Perfect
I fit
he / she / it fits
I fitI have fit
Present Continuous:I am fitting  ·  he / she / it is fitting

Grammar guide

The verb "fit" belongs to the AAA group — all three principal parts are identical: "fit" / "fit" / "fit". The spelling never changes, whether you use it in the present tense, past simple, or as a past participle in a perfect or passive construction.

Use "fit" in the present to describe habits, facts, or scheduled events: "We fit the figures every quarter." The same form serves as the past simple for completed actions: "They fit the budget before noon." With auxiliary verbs it functions as the past participle: "She has already fit her quota." Because all three forms look the same, an auxiliary (have, has, had) or a past-time marker (yesterday, last year) provides the tense signal.

AAA verbs are mostly short, high-frequency words ending in -t or -d, such as cost, cut, hit, hurt, let, put, set, and spread. Because they never inflect, you only need to learn one spelling. The difficulty is that context — an auxiliary verb, a time adverb, or the surrounding narrative — must indicate which tense is intended.

Quick-reference rule: when "fit" follows have, has, or had, it is acting as a past participle ("she has fit the price twice"); when it follows did not or appears in a question with did, it is the infinitive in a past-tense structure ("did they fit it correctly?"); in all other uses it is most likely present simple or a base-form infinitive.

Quick quiz

Which sentence is correct?

Conjugation pattern

All three forms are identical — nothing to memorise beyond the base form.

Verbs with the same pattern

fit — fit — fit | English Irregular Verb · English Road