Past Tense of “forget”
The past tense of forget is forgot; the past participle is forgotten/forgot.
Why “forget” behaves this way
"Forget" combines the Old English pejorative prefix "for-" (seen also in "forbid" and "forgive," often adding a sense of "away" or "undoing") with "get." "Get" itself was borrowed relatively late into English from Old Norse "geta" around the 12th century, largely displacing the native Old English verb "begietan" it was closely related to, and it settled into a strong-verb pattern (class 5): get/got/gotten. The flower name "forget-me-not," borrowed and translated from French and German folk names in the late Middle Ages, uses the bare imperative form of the verb rather than any past-tense form, showing how deeply this particular irregular verb has worked its way into fixed, non-technical phrases across multiple European languages independently.
American English famously kept the older "gotten" participle for plain "get" ("I've gotten used to it") while British English mostly dropped it in favor of "got" for both past tense and participle. "Forgotten," though, stayed standard as the participle in both dialects — the compound didn't follow "get"'s dialect split the way the plain verb did, which is a genuinely uneven historical outcome worth noting rather than assuming both verbs track identically.
The common confusion
"Forgot" alone sometimes gets used informally as a participle in casual American speech ("I've forgot all about it"), but this is nonstandard in edited writing, where "forgotten" remains the required form after "have/has/had" — unlike plain "get," where "got" as a participle is fully standard in British English. A further wrinkle involves the gerund-versus-infinitive distinction covered elsewhere on this site: "forgot to lock the door" describes a failed intended action, while "forgot locking the door" describes forgetting that the locking already happened — two genuinely different meanings hiding behind one verb and one small grammatical choice. The verb form itself hasn't shifted at all across any of these uses — it's just that a single flower name has quietly kept it alive in casual conversation for centuries.
How it's actually used
"Forget" pairs naturally with both direct objects ("forgot her name") and infinitive complements ("forgot to lock the door"), and the meaning shifts subtly depending on which pattern is used — "forgot to call" is a lapse in action, while "forgot calling" (with a gerund) would describe forgetting that the action already happened, a distinction that trips up many learners. Cognitive-science and memory research writing uses "forgotten" heavily as a technical descriptor of information no longer retrievable ("forgotten within 24 hours without review"), a modern empirical usage layered onto centuries-old grammar with no adjustment needed.
Across the tense system
"Forgotten" dominates the passive and perfect ("has been forgotten," "was forgotten by history"), giving the word a strong presence in reflective and historical writing about memory and legacy, well beyond its everyday use for misplaced keys. "Forgettable," an adjective built from the verb stem rather than either irregular past form, describes something not worth remembering in the first place, a subtly different meaning from "forgotten," which describes something that was once remembered and has since been lost. The phrase "lest we forget," used in remembrance ceremonies, preserves an older, more formal subjunctive-flavored construction that's largely vanished from ordinary speech outside this one ritual context.
Common real mistakes
Beyond "I've forgot" instead of "I've forgotten," a second real error is confusing "forget" with "leave behind" in phrasal contexts — "I forgot my umbrella at home" is standard, but "I forgot my umbrella at home behind" is a redundant blend some learners produce by combining the two related but distinct expressions.
Examples
- She forgot her keys on the kitchen counter again.
- He has forgotten how to get there without directions.
- I forgot to call you back yesterday, I'm sorry.
- They had forgotten all about the meeting.
- Don't let this be forgotten by the next generation.
- He forgot his lines halfway through the speech.
- We've forgotten more than we ever remembered about that year.
- She forgot her umbrella and got soaked walking home.
- The garden was full of forget-me-nots in early spring.
- It was a forgettable performance, to be honest.
Memory trick
Ride along with plain "get": get/got/gotten becomes forget/forgot/forgotten with the exact same vowel shifts — learn one, and you've effectively learned both.