Past Tense of “shake”
The past tense of shake is shook; the past participle is shaken.
Why “shake” behaves this way
"Shake" comes from Old English "scacan," a strong verb whose irregular conjugation (shake/shook/shaken) shows the classic Germanic vowel-gradation pattern found in verbs like "take/took/taken" and "forsake/forsook/forsaken," a shape that has barely shifted in over a thousand years of use. The verb's core physical sense — a rapid, often involuntary back-and-forth motion — has barely shifted since Old English, even as its figurative range has expanded enormously.
The idiom "shaken, not stirred" (popularized by James Bond) and the phrase "shake hands" both draw on very old, very literal senses of the verb, while modern figurative uses — "shaken by the news," "the market was shaken by the announcement" — extend the physical trembling sense metaphorically to emotional or economic disturbance, a semantic move so natural that most speakers never notice it as a metaphor at all. Milkshakes and cocktail-making both rely on the literal shaking action to blend ingredients, a culinary sense old enough that "shaken, not stirred" reads as a meaningful technical distinction to bartenders, not just a memorable movie line.
The common confusion
The confusion is between "shook" (simple past) and "shaken" (participle): "she has shook his hand" is a fairly common error for the correct "has shaken," the same take/took/taken-style trap that catches many of this strong-verb family's members.
How it's actually used
"Shake" spans literal physical trembling (an earthquake shaking a building), social ritual (shaking hands), cooking (shaking a cocktail), and heavy figurative use (being shaken by news, a market shaken by uncertainty), with the figurative senses arguably as frequent as the literal ones in everyday adult writing. Medical writing uses "shaking" clinically to describe tremors associated with certain conditions, a precise diagnostic use distinct from the everyday emotional or social senses of the word. A firm handshake still matters in plenty of professional settings even in an era of mostly virtual meetings. A toddler learning to say goodbye will often shake a hand solemnly before running straight back to playing. A brisk cocktail shaken with plenty of ice chills far faster than one merely stirred gently. A nervous speaker's hands sometimes shake visibly before the first few words even come out. A single loose bolt can make an entire machine shake noticeably at high speed. A rickety old ladder can shake alarmingly even under a fairly light load. A single strong tremor shook loose plaster from ceilings across the whole neighborhood. A single loud clap of thunder shook the windows enough to wake the whole house.
Across the tense system
Perfect and passive constructions require "shaken": "has shaken," "was shaken by," "will have shaken" — never "has shook," a mistake common enough in casual speech that it's worth flagging even though it rarely appears in edited writing. Seismology reports describe how strongly an area "shook" during an earthquake using standardized intensity scales, giving this common verb a precise technical role in disaster documentation.
Common real mistakes
The dominant error is "has shook" instead of "has shaken," especially common in spoken English and dialogue transcription, where the simple past sometimes gets used informally in place of the participle even among fluent speakers. A further point: "shook" occasionally appears informally as slang for being surprised or unsettled ("I'm shook"), a usage that deliberately breaks from standard grammar for stylistic effect rather than representing a genuine error. Writers should also avoid the redundant phrase "shook up and disturbed," since "shaken" alone typically conveys sufficient emotional weight without needing a paired synonym.
Examples
- The earthquake shook the entire building for nearly a minute.
- She was visibly shaken after hearing the news.
- They shook hands to seal the agreement.
- The scandal has shaken public confidence in the institution.
- The negotiations were badly shaken by the sudden leadership change.
- The whole apartment building shook when the delivery truck backed into it.
- A sudden gust shook loose several roof tiles during the storm.
Memory trick
Group it with "take/took/taken" and "forsake/forsook/forsaken" — all three share the identical vowel pattern, so "has shaken" should feel as natural as "has taken."