Past Tense of “quit”
The past tense of quit is quit (quitted in British English, less common); the past participle is quit (quitted in British English, less common).
Why “quit” behaves this way
"Quit" was borrowed into English from Old French "quiter" (to release, set free, discharge from an obligation), ultimately from the same Latin root, "quietus" ("at rest, calm"), that also gives English "quiet," "quite," and "acquit" — all distant relatives sharing the underlying ancient idea of being released into a calm or settled state, whether that's a legal discharge (acquit), a psychological state (quiet), an intensifier of completeness (quite, originally meaning "completely free of anything else"), or stopping an activity (quit).
"Quite" as an intensifier ("quite good," "quite tall") descends from the very same Latin root as "quit" and "quiet," historically meaning something closer to "completely" or "entirely free of qualification" before it softened into its modern, more hedging sense in British English ("quite good" often meaning only "fairly good" rather than "extremely good") — a genuine semantic drift within one shared word family that most speakers today would never guess is connected to stopping a job or an activity.
The common confusion
The form itself is settled enough that American English keeps "quit" unchanged for both past tense and participle without much confusion; the real dialectal note is that British English does technically allow the regularized "quitted," though it's markedly less common than plain "quit" even in British usage today, making the split less firm than the leaned/leant or learned/learnt pairs.
How it's actually used
"Quit" combines with a following gerund to describe stopping a habitual activity — "quit smoking," "quit complaining" — a construction that, unlike many verbs, never takes a following infinitive with the same meaning ("quit to smoke" is not a valid English sentence), one of several verbs (along with "stop" and "avoid") that require the -ing form specifically. "Quits" also survives as a fixed idiom meaning "even" or "settled" in the phrase "call it quits," describing mutually agreeing to end a dispute or arrangement without further action. Legal English preserves an older, more formal sense of "quit" in the phrase "quitclaim," a deed by which someone releases any claim to a property, a fossil of the verb's original meaning of formally releasing or discharging an obligation. Sports commentary also uses "quit" pointedly as a criticism ("that team quit in the second half"), implying a lack of effort rather than a neutral decision to stop, a more judgmental register than the neutral employment sense.
Across the tense system
Across tenses, "quit" behaves identically whether describing employment ("she quit her job"), a habit ("he has quit drinking"), or an activity ("they quit early") — the zero-change form applies uniformly, unlike some irregular verbs whose behavior shifts subtly by sense.
Common real mistakes
There is little conjugation error risk given the stable zero-change form, but learners occasionally produce "quitted" in American English contexts where plain "quit" is strongly preferred, a minor but noticeable dialectal mismatch. A separate, real confusion is following "quit" with an infinitive instead of the required gerund ("quit to smoke" instead of "quit smoking"), an error that surfaces most often when a writer's native tongue pairs the equivalent verb with an infinitive rather than the -ing form English demands here. Some writers also confuse "quit" with "resign": "resign" implies a more formal, often written notice of departure from a position, while "quit" covers informal or abrupt departures equally well.
Examples
- She quit her job to start a business.
- He has quit smoking three times this year.
- They quit the game halfway through.
- We had quit trying to convince him by then.
- This company quits at nothing to win a contract.
- Don't quit now, you're almost there.
- She's quitting her lease at the end of the month.
- He quitted the premises immediately. (rare British usage)
Memory trick
Remember "quit," "quiet," and "quite" as distant cousins from the same Latin root meaning "at rest" — quitting something is etymologically about coming to rest from an activity, the same underlying idea as being quiet or being entirely (quite) done with something. Default to unchanged "quit" for both past tense and participle unless you're specifically writing in a British register that happens to prefer "quitted."