Shed (irregular verb)

'To shed' means 'to cast off', usually in a natural process: trees shed leaves, snakes shed their skins, children shed their first set of teeth. More actively, 'to shed blood' is 'to kill' (or at least 'wound'), which gives the noun bloodshed. Figuratively, a teacher or book may shed light on a topic which a student has not yet understood. In headlines, it is often used for 'making redundancies', or 'dismissing people': "BBC to shed 20 presenters."

• There is also a verb which you are unlikewly to find in academic writing, 'to shed' which means 'to put in a shed (outhouse, or hut)'.

'To shed' is an irregular verb. Its forms are given here:

Base form	past tense	-ed participle	Remarks
shed	shed	shed	~ 'to put in a shed' has regular forms in both pasts: shedded

This is one of the "the 250 or so irregular verbs" listed in Quirk 1985. The list "contains most of the irregular verbs in present-day English ... but is not meant to be exhaustive, particularly with regard to derivative verbs." AWE has copied most of the entries in that list. The verb 'to shed' belongs to Quirk's Class 5