Past Tense of “forgive”
The past tense of forgive is forgave; the past participle is forgiven.
Why “forgive” behaves this way
"Forgive" pairs the prefix "for-" with "give," which goes back to Old English "giefan," a strong verb (class 5) whose initial sound was originally a palatalized "g" — closer to a "y" sound in pure Old English. Old Norse "gefa," brought by Viking settlers, had a hard "g" instead, and that Norse pronunciation ultimately won out, which is why modern "give" starts with a hard "g" rather than the "y" sound its native Old English ancestor would otherwise have produced. "Forgive and forget," a set phrase pairing this verb with its close relative, dates back at least to the 16th century and treats forgiveness and forgetting as a single combined act, even though psychologically and grammatically they're entirely separate processes with entirely separate irregular histories.
"Forgive" literally meant "to give up" or "to give completely" in its earliest Old English use — the sense of releasing someone from a debt or wrongdoing grew out of that literal "giving away" of a grievance, a metaphor that's stayed remarkably transparent for over a thousand years even as the word's grammar (gave/given) stayed identical to plain "give."
The common confusion
The real trap is tense mismatch in the passive and perfect: "forgiven" is required after "have/has/had" or "be" ("I have forgiven him," "he was forgiven"), while "forgave" only ever stands alone as a simple past ("I forgave him") — mixing them ("I have forgave him") is one of the single most common irregular-verb errors in casual writing. A further wrinkle is the difference between "forgive" and "excuse": forgiving implies the offense really happened and really mattered, while excusing implies it wasn't fully the person's fault to begin with — a meaningful distinction writers sometimes blur despite the words having entirely separate conjugation histories.
How it's actually used
"Forgive" often takes both a person and the offense in the same sentence ("forgive me for being late"), a double-object-style pattern that mirrors plain "give" ("give me the book") closely enough that the grammatical structure, not just the conjugation, carries over from the base verb. Modern psychology and therapy writing distinguishes carefully between "forgiving" (releasing resentment) and "forgetting" or "excusing" (pretending something didn't happen or wasn't wrong), a nuance that matters clinically even though the two verbs get folded together constantly in casual speech.
Across the tense system
Religious, therapeutic, and reconciliation writing lean heavily on the participle "forgiven" in passive constructions ("you are forgiven," "sins are forgiven"), a register where the word appears almost as often as a standalone adjective-like state as it does as part of an active verb phrase. Financial writing uses "forgiven" in a specialized, literal sense entirely apart from personal relationships — a "forgiven loan" or "forgiven debt" means the creditor has formally canceled the obligation, a usage that's grown substantially in the last few decades of student-loan and mortgage-relief reporting. Support groups and recovery literature often frame forgiveness as an ongoing process rather than a single completed act, favoring progressive constructions ("is learning to forgive") over the simple past far more than everyday conversation does.
Common real mistakes
Beyond "I have forgave," a second frequent error is dropping the required preposition in the offense clause — "forgive me being late" instead of the more standard "forgive me for being late" — a construction that varies by dialect and formality level but trips up many learners transferring patterns from their first language.
Examples
- She forgave him after a long, honest conversation.
- He has forgiven his brother for the argument years ago.
- They forgave the debt entirely rather than pursue collection.
- I forgave myself for the mistake eventually.
- The community has forgiven and moved forward together.
- She was never fully forgiven by her own family.
- He forgave the insult and let it go.
- We had forgiven each other long before we spoke again.
- Part of the loan was eventually forgiven by the lender.
- It's easier to forgive than to forget, she said.
Memory trick
Match it to plain "give": give/gave/given becomes forgive/forgave/forgiven with the identical vowel pattern — if you can conjugate "give," you already know "forgive."