Past Tense of “choose”
The past tense of choose is chose; the past participle is chosen.
Why “choose” behaves this way
"Choose" comes from Old English "ceosan," part of a Germanic strong-verb class that formed its past tense through an internal vowel change rather than a suffix — the same broad ablaut pattern behind "freeze/froze/frozen" and "speak/spoke/spoken." The double o in the modern spelling is a later Middle English development that helped distinguish the word visually from its unrelated near-homophone "chews."
"Choose" and "chose" (past tense) look deceptively similar on the page, differing only in the vowel sound, which is part of why the past tense is sometimes mistakenly written as "choose" in casual writing even by fluent speakers moving quickly. "Chosen," the participle, kept the older Germanic -en ending that many strong verbs have since dropped, placing it in the same family as "frozen," "broken," and "spoken." "Choice," the related noun, actually entered English separately through Old French "chois," itself ultimately borrowed from a Germanic source related to "choose" — meaning the verb and its most common companion noun took two different historical routes into English before converging on clearly related modern spellings and meanings.
The common confusion
The most common real error is writing present-tense "choose" where past-tense "chose" belongs ("yesterday she choose the blue one" instead of "chose"), an error that likely persists because the words are pronounced so differently despite their nearly identical spelling, making it easy for a fast typist's fingers to default to the more frequently typed "choose." A second, rarer error is using "chosen" as a simple past ("she chosen the wrong path"), when "chosen" always requires a helping verb like "have" or "was." Non-native speakers whose first language doesn't mark this kind of internal vowel change sometimes regularize the verb entirely, producing "choosed" instead of "chose" — a natural, logical guess given how most English verbs form their past tense, but one this particular strong verb never allows.
How it's actually used
"Choose" often pairs with "between" for exactly two options and "among" for three or more, following the same among/between distinction covered elsewhere on this site, though "between" is now widely accepted for more than two choices as well when each option is considered individually, especially when the options are being weighed one against another rather than as an undivided group.
Across the tense system
Across the perfect tenses, "chosen" always needs an auxiliary — "has chosen," "had chosen," "will have chosen" — never standing alone as a finite verb the way "chose" can. This makes "choose/chose/chosen" a useful teaching example alongside "speak/spoke/spoken" and "break/broke/broken" for the broader Germanic strong-verb pattern where the past participle keeps an older -en ending that the simple past tense has since shed, a genuine structural fossil in modern English's otherwise fairly regularized verb system. In everyday speech, "chose" and "chosen" both remain fully productive and show no sign of regularizing toward "choosed," unlike some rarer irregular verbs that are slowly drifting toward regular -ed forms over time — "choose" stays firmly irregular in every register, from casual conversation to formal writing, precisely because it's such a frequently used, everyday verb that speakers learn its irregular forms early and reliably.
Common real mistakes
Besides the choose/chose tense confusion, writers sometimes misuse "chosen" as an adjective in contexts where "selected" or "preferred" would read more naturally in formal prose ("the chosen method" is fine, but overusing "chosen" as an all-purpose adjective can sound stilted in casual writing).
Examples
- She chose the smaller apartment despite the higher rent nearby.
- They have chosen a new location for the office.
- He always chooses the window seat on flights.
- The committee chose her proposal over six others.
- We were chosen to represent the school at the competition.
- She's choosing between two excellent job offers.
- He chose to stay quiet during the argument.
- The jury has chosen its verdict after long deliberation.
Memory trick
Picture the double o in "choose" as two open eyes still looking over the options, deciding — present tense, still deciding — while the single o in "chose" marks the moment the decision has already closed. If the decision already happened, drop an o and use "chose."