Verb forms
Base form
/tel/
Past Simple
/toʊld/
Past Participle
/toʊld/
Example sentences
Base form · tell
- Parents tell their children bedtime stories.
Past Simple · told
- He told us a fascinating story about his travels.
- She told without any hesitation.
- They told it again the following morning.
- He didn't tell anything at the meeting.
Past Participle · told
- I have told you this a hundred times.
- We have never told anything quite like it.
- He has told it many times before.
- I have already told it more than once.
Common collocations
tell the truth
to say what is true
tell apart
to distinguish one from another
tell a story
to narrate something
Key tenses
| Present Simple | Past Simple | Present Perfect |
|---|---|---|
I tell he / she / it tells | I told | I have told |
| Present Continuous:I am telling · he / she / it is telling | ||
Grammar guide
The verb "tell" follows the ABB pattern: the past simple and past participle share one form ("told"), while the base form ("tell") 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 "told" 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 told the whole report by herself." The action is seen as finished and anchored to a specific past time.
The past participle "told" always works together with an auxiliary verb. It appears in: (1) the present perfect with have/has — "I have told this several times before"; (2) the past perfect with had — "By the time we called, they had already told"; (3) passive voice — "The decision was told by the board." Never use "told" as a standalone past-tense verb without an auxiliary.
Memory tip: because "told" and "told" 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 "tell" 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.