Past Tense of “overtake”
The past tense of overtake is overtook; the past participle is overtaken.
Why “overtake” behaves this way
"Overtake" combines "over-" with "take," whose irregular conjugation (take/took/taken) traces to Old Norse influence on Old English ("taka"), one of many everyday verbs English borrowed from Norse contact during the Viking Age. "Overtake" itself has meant "to catch up with and pass" since Middle English, used both literally (in travel, racing, driving) and, since at least the 17th century, figuratively (events, emotions, or circumstances overtaking someone). UK road-safety campaigns and the official Highway Code use "overtake" as their standard term for passing another vehicle, with entire sections of British driving-test material built around the rules for overtaking safely, making this one of the more heavily codified everyday uses of any irregular verb in the language.
British English in particular has kept "overtake" as the standard everyday word for passing another vehicle on the road ("do not overtake on a bend"), a usage so entrenched in UK traffic law and road signage that it's practically a technical term there, whereas American English tends to prefer "pass" for the identical driving maneuver — a genuine regional difference in which word dominates a specific everyday context, even though "overtake" is understood everywhere. Sailing and rowing terminology also uses "overtake" for one boat passing another during a race, a usage that predates the automobile entirely and shows the verb's core meaning — catching up to and passing a competitor in motion — has stayed stable across centuries of changing transportation technology.
The common confusion
The confusion is between "overtook" (simple past) and "overtaken" (participle): "she has overtook the leader" is a frequent error for the correct "has overtaken the leader," mirroring the same trap plain "take" sets ("has took" instead of "has taken").
How it's actually used
"Overtake" spans literal motion (overtaking a car, a runner, a competitor) and figurative overwhelming (being overtaken by grief, fatigue, or events), with British English additionally treating it as the default term for passing on the road, a regional preference worth knowing if writing for a UK audience. Business journalism uses "overtake" constantly to describe one company, product, or market surpassing a rival in a specific measurable category ("overtaken in market share," "overtaken in sales"), almost always in the perfect or passive voice rather than the simple past.
Across the tense system
Perfect and passive constructions require "overtaken": "has overtaken," "was overtaken by," "will have overtaken." This distinction matters heavily in sports journalism and business writing, both of which use this verb constantly in perfect-tense constructions ("has overtaken its rival in market share"). Election-night reporting uses "overtake" heavily in live, present-progressive form ("the challenger is overtaking the incumbent in returns") precisely because vote counts are updating in real time as the sentence is written.
Common real mistakes
The dominant error is "has overtook" instead of the correct "has overtaken," a mistake common enough in sports and business writing that it's worth flagging as a specific pattern to watch for. A second, milder error conflates British "overtake" with American "pass" in contexts where regional consistency matters. Because "overtake" appears so often in exactly this passive, perfect-tense business-journalism context, the "has overtook" error is one of the more visible and frequently corrected mistakes in edited financial writing, worth flagging specifically in that genre. A further point: American writers producing UK-facing content should default to "overtake" rather than "pass" for driving contexts, since "pass" can sound noticeably foreign to British readers in that specific setting.
Examples
- She overtook the leader on the final lap.
- The company has overtaken its biggest rival in market share.
- Fatigue eventually overtook him after the long drive.
- Do not overtake on this stretch of road.
- The cyclist overtook three riders on the final climb.
- Streaming revenue has overtaken box-office revenue for most studios.
- Renewable energy has overtaken coal in several national power grids.
- Mobile traffic overtook desktop traffic for the site sometime last spring.
Memory trick
Follow "take" exactly: take, took, taken becomes overtake, overtook, overtaken — if you'd never write "has took the bus," don't write "has overtook the leader" either.