Past Tense of “show”
The past tense of show is showed; the past participle is shown/showed.
Why “show” behaves this way
"Show" comes from Old English "sceawian," originally meaning "to look at" or "to observe," which gradually shifted to the modern causative sense of making something visible or perceptible to others — a semantic flip from looking to being looked at that happened gradually over Middle English. The simple past regularized early on to "showed," while the participle genuinely splits today between the traditional "shown" and the regularized "showed," with British English favoring "shown" more consistently than American English, which accepts both fairly comfortably.
This split mirrors similar regularization patterns seen in "proved/proven" and "sawed/sawn," where British English tends to hold onto an older irregular participle more firmly than American English, which has drifted further toward full regularization for many originally strong verbs. Courtroom procedure relies on the phrase "show cause," a fixed legal use of "show" requiring a party to demonstrate sufficient reason for a requested action, distinct from the word's everyday demonstrative sense.
The common confusion
Most style guides accept both "has shown" and "has showed," so this comes down to preference more than correctness — though "shown" still carries more weight as the traditional default, especially for formal or British-facing writing.
How it's actually used
"Show" is one of the most frequently used verbs in English, appearing in an enormous range of contexts from simple demonstration ("she showed me the results") to entertainment ("a TV show," "the show goes on") to evidentiary language ("the data shows a clear trend"), with "shown" the safer default for the participle in formal writing. Reality television popularized "show" as both noun and verb in overlapping ways ("the show showed footage of..."), a linguistic quirk that rarely causes real confusion since context always separates the two uses. A gallery that has shown an artist's early work often gets first offer on their later, more valuable pieces. A traveling exhibit that has shown in a dozen cities usually arrives with a very specific installation checklist. A debut novelist whose early drafts were shown only to a small writing group eventually found a wide readership. A quiet, unassuming exhibit sometimes shows more genuine craftsmanship than its flashier neighbors. A modest storefront gallery has quietly shown some of the city's most promising new painters. A traveling exhibit showed remarkable range across just two small gallery rooms. A curious visitor was shown the museum's rarely opened archive on request.
Across the tense system
The simple past is always "showed" — there is no irregular alternative there — while the participle can be either "shown" or "showed," a genuine style choice rather than a hard rule, though "shown" remains marginally more common in edited prose. Museum wall text and exhibition catalogs typically favor the passive "has been shown" over any actively attributed phrasing when describing where a piece previously exhibited.
Common real mistakes
There is no strict error between "shown" and "showed" as participles, but writers should never use "shown" as the simple past tense ("she shown me the results" is incorrect; it must be "showed"). A further point: writers should avoid the redundant phrase "showed and demonstrated," since the two words overlap enough in meaning that pairing them rarely adds real clarity. Writers should also avoid confusing "show" (to display) with the unrelated idiom "no-show" (failing to appear), a compound noun built from the verb but carrying an entirely opposite practical meaning.
Examples
- She showed the class how to solve the equation.
- The data has shown a consistent upward trend for years.
- He showed up late to every meeting last month.
- New evidence has shown the theory to be largely correct.
- The exhibit showed rare manuscripts never previously displayed in public.
- The painting had never been shown publicly before this year's retrospective.
- Ticket holders who no-show three times in a row lose priority booking status.
- A quiet local gallery has shown more emerging talent than its size would suggest.
Memory trick
Remember the simple past is always "showed," while "shown" is the more traditionally favored, slightly more formal choice for the participle — safe to default to in almost any writing context.