Past participle

Past participle; sometimes the passive participle. (I prefer to call it the –ed participle, although one of the commonest of the irregularities among English verbs is when the past participle, or past tense, or both, end in letters other than ‘ ed’.) This is not the same as the past tense – though for regular verbs it looks exactly the same. When a verb form ending in –ed (or an equivalent) is used as a verb on its own – e.g. “He curried the vegetables” – it is the past tense. When it is combined with the auxiliaries have or be – e.g. “He has curried the meat”, “the meat was curried” – or used in a more free-standing way – “curried, the meat was delicious” – it is a participle.