Past Tense of “blow”
The past tense of blow is blew; the past participle is blown.
Why “blow” behaves this way
"Blow" descends from Old English "blawan," part of the same reduplicating-turned-ablaut strong-verb class as "grow" and "know," which is why all three still share the distinctive -ew/-own pattern (blew/blown, grew/grown, knew/known) despite having entirely different meanings today.
English actually preserves two historically separate verbs both spelled "blow": this one, describing wind or breath moving air (blow/blew/blown), and an unrelated, now largely archaic weak verb "blow" meaning to bloom or flower, surviving today only in the fixed poetic phrase "full-blown" (originally describing a flower in full bloom, now used figuratively for anything fully developed, as in "a full-blown crisis").
The common confusion
The confusion is mostly about idiomatic range rather than the conjugation itself, which is stable and rarely misused; the real point of interest is the coincidental overlap with the archaic "blow" (bloom), which explains why "full-blown" doesn't actually mean "fully blown by wind" the way a modern speaker might assume.
How it's actually used
"Blow" anchors a huge number of phrasal verbs and idioms far removed from literal wind — "blow up" (explode, or become very angry), "blow off" (dismiss, or skip an obligation), "blow over" (a controversy fading away), "blow through" (spend quickly) — each combination carrying its own distinct, often unpredictable meaning. "Blown away" describes being deeply impressed or emotionally overwhelmed, a common figurative use with no literal connection to wind. Musicians describe playing a wind instrument as "blowing" it ("blow a trumpet"), a direct literal use predating any of the figurative senses discussed above. "Blow off steam" (release built-up frustration) and "blow one's own horn" (boast about oneself) are two more idioms riding on the same physical image of forceful air, each carrying a distinct meaning learners typically memorize as a fixed unit rather than derive from the verb's literal sense.
Across the tense system
"Blown" functions as a standalone adjective in the fixed phrase "full-blown," describing something fully developed or at its most extreme ("a full-blown investigation"), a use that traces back to the unrelated archaic "blow" (bloom) rather than to the wind-related verb discussed throughout this entry. Weather forecasters use "blowing snow" as precise meteorological vocabulary distinct from ordinary falling snow, describing snow already on the ground being lifted and driven by wind rather than snow actively falling from the sky, a technical distinction that affects visibility warnings.
Common real mistakes
A frequent error is producing "blowed" as a mistaken regular past tense, a nonstandard form heard mainly in some dialects and children's early speech. Learners occasionally also assume "full-blown" literally describes something blown fully by wind, missing its actual, unrelated origin in an archaic sense of flowering. A further common slip among learners is confusing the phrasal verbs "blow up" (explode, or lose one's temper) and "blow over" (a problem fading away), two combinations that end up meaning almost opposite things even though only one preposition separates them — the same pattern shows up in similarly mismatched pairs built on "put" and "hold" elsewhere on this site. A further mismatch some writers make is using "blow" for a gentle breeze in a context that calls for a softer verb like "drift" or "waft," since "blow" on its own tends to imply a stronger, more forceful current of air than a light gust would suggest. A last note: "blow it" (ruin an opportunity) is a fixed idiom distinct from any literal sense of wind, and learners sometimes mistakenly assume a literal meaning is intended when it's purely figurative.
Examples
- The wind blew hard across the open field.
- She has blown through her entire paycheck already.
- They blew out the candles together.
- We had blown the deadline by nearly a week.
- The whistle blows at exactly noon every day.
- It's a full-blown emergency at this point.
- He's blowing off steam after a rough day.
- The scandal blew over faster than anyone expected.
Memory trick
Group "blow/blew/blown" with "grow/grew/grown" and "know/knew/known" as sharing the same ancient reduplicating-turned-ablaut pattern, and remember "full-blown" is a fossil of a completely different, now-archaic "blow" meaning to bloom, unrelated to wind at all.