Verb forms
Base form
/liːp/
Past Simple
Past Participle
Example sentences
Base form · leap
- Salmon leap up waterfalls to reach their spawning grounds.
Past Simple · leapt
- The cat leapt onto the kitchen counter.
- Did you leap it before lunch?
- I leapt it as soon as I possibly could.
- We leapt it together earlier this week.
Past Participle · leapt
- Technology has leapt forward in the last decade.
- We have never leapt anything quite like it.
- He has leapt it many times before.
- I have already leapt it more than once.
Key tenses
| Present Simple | Past Simple | Present Perfect |
|---|---|---|
I leap he / she / it leaps | I leapt | I have leapt |
| Present Continuous:I am leaping · he / she / it is leaping | ||
Grammar guide
The verb "leap" follows the ABB pattern: the past simple and past participle share one form ("leapt"), while the base form ("leap") 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 "leapt" 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 leapt the whole report by herself." The action is seen as finished and anchored to a specific past time.
The past participle "leapt" always works together with an auxiliary verb. It appears in: (1) the present perfect with have/has — "I have leapt this several times before"; (2) the past perfect with had — "By the time we called, they had already leapt"; (3) passive voice — "The decision was leapt by the board." Never use "leapt" as a standalone past-tense verb without an auxiliary.
Memory tip: because "leapt" and "leapt" 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 "leap" 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.