Past participles are preceded by helping, or auxiliary, verbs, such as have, has, and had. When my sister swam at swim meets, she always came in first.We swam out to the dock and back again in record time.The deer swam across the river to escape the cougar.Instead of swimmed, the past tense is swam. Salmon need to swim upstream in order to reach spawning locations.Ī verb is typically considered to be irregular if its past tense or past participle is formed without using the standard –ed or –d endings used in regular verbs ( parked, dated ).Chris will swim the last leg of the relay.She swims laps in the pool as part of her workout routine.Swim is the base form of the verb, which can be used in most present tenses ( swim, swims ), most future tenses ( will swim ), and as an infinitive ( to swim ).

In this article, we will explain how and when to correctly use swim, swam, and swum, explain why swim is considered to be an irregular verb, and provide examples of how we use swim, swam, and swum in sentences. The past tense of swim is swam, and the past participle of swim is swum. Swum is the past participle form, which is used to form the present perfect tense ( has/have swum ), the past perfect tense ( had swum ), and in passive voice constructions (as in The 400m race was swum by the Olympic team ). Swam is the past tense form, as in I swam in the river an hour ago.

Swim is the base form, which can be used in the present tense, the future tense ( will swim ), and as an infinitive ( to swim ).

To swim past tense