Past Tense of “give”
The past tense of give is gave; the past participle is given.
Why “give” behaves this way
"Give" descends from Old English "giefan," a strong verb, but its modern hard /g/ sound (rather than the softer /j/-like sound the Old English spelling would suggest) is the result of Old Norse influence during the Viking settlement period — Norse dialects pronounced the initial consonant harder, and that pronunciation won out in the northern and eastern parts of England before spreading more widely, which is also why "get" (also Norse-influenced) and "give" share the same crisp initial-g sound while native Old English words with a similar spelling pattern, like "yield" (from OE "gieldan"), kept the softer sound.
The competition between the native soft-g pronunciation and the Norse hard-g pronunciation played out across many English words during the Middle English period, and the outcome was genuinely inconsistent word by word — which is why modern English ended up with some Norse-influenced hard-g words (give, get, gate) sitting alongside native soft-g/y words (yield, yard, yellow) descended from what was, in some cases, the exact same underlying Germanic root.
The common confusion
The irregular forms themselves rarely cause trouble; the more common real mix-up is "give" vs. "gift" used as a verb ("gift someone something") — a usage some style guides still consider informal, since "gift" as a verb is a comparatively recent development compared to the long-standing "give."
How it's actually used
"Give" is a classic "ditransitive" verb, meaning it can take two objects in either of two patterns: "give someone something" (give her the book) or "give something to someone" (give the book to her) — both are correct, but the first (double-object) pattern is generally preferred in casual speech while the second (prepositional) pattern is often used for emphasis or when the recipient is a longer phrase. "Give" also appears in a large family of fixed phrases pairing it with an abstract noun rather than a physical object — "give a speech," "give an example," "give it a try," "give notice" — a light-verb pattern similar to "make a decision" and "take a break," where the real meaning sits mostly in the noun rather than in "give" itself.
Across the tense system
"Given" functions as a standalone participial adjective meaning "assumed" or "specified," independent of any sentence describing an act of giving — "given the circumstances," "at a given time" — a use so common that many speakers don't immediately connect it back to the literal verb "give" it derives from.
Common real mistakes
Word-order errors are the most common real mistake with "give": "give to him the book" instead of the correct "give him the book" or "give the book to him" — non-native speakers whose first language orders ditransitive objects differently often produce this exact structure. Learners also sometimes overuse the passive "be given" where active phrasing would be clearer and more natural in English — "a chance was given to her" instead of the more idiomatic "she was given a chance" or "she got a chance" — a stylistic rather than strictly grammatical issue, but one that consistently marks non-native prose in formal writing. A further mix-up for learners is "give" versus "donate" in contexts implying formality: "donate to charity" is the expected register for institutional giving, while plain "give" reads as more casual or personal, and swapping the two in the wrong register ("I donated him my old jacket") produces an oddly formal-sounding sentence for an everyday act.
Examples
- She gave him the last ticket.
- They have given generously to the fund.
- He gives the same speech every year.
- We were given very little notice.
- It would have given us more time to prepare.
- Has she given you an answer yet?
- Give it a try.
- They're giving away free samples today.
Memory trick
Remember that "give" and "get" are pronunciation cousins — both got their modern hard-g sound from Old Norse — while "yield," from the same Germanic family, kept the older, softer native English sound. Save "donate" for institutional or charitable giving and plain "give" for everyday personal acts — swapping them creates a formality mismatch even when the grammar itself is technically fine.