Past Tense of “wind”
The past tense of wind is wound; the past participle is wound.
Why “wind” behaves this way
The verb "wind" meaning to turn, twist, or coil descends from Old English "windan" (to turn, twist, plait, brandish), a Class III strong verb whose principal parts ran windan / wand / wunden. That is the very same ablaut machinery that still shapes "find/found" and "bind/bound" today, which is why "wind" lands on "wound" by exactly the pattern a speaker already knows from those verbs. It is cognate with German "winden" and Dutch "winden," both of which have held onto the twisting sense across a thousand years.
What makes "wind" unusual is that its spelling collides with two entirely unrelated words. The noun "wind" meaning moving air is a separate Old English word ("wind," cognate with Latin "ventus") that has nothing to do with the verb of coiling — the shared spelling is pure historical accident. The two are heteronyms: the coiling verb is pronounced to rhyme with "find," while the air noun rhymes with "pinned." A second collision waits in the past tense: "wound" the past of this verb rhymes with "found," but "wound" meaning an injury is a different word again (Old English "wund") and rhymes with "tuned." One spelling, four historically distinct pronunciations across the family.
The common confusion
The sharpest confusion is not in forming the past tense but in reading it aloud: "wound" as the past of "wind" (/waʊnd/, rhyming with "found") looks identical to "wound" meaning a cut or injury (/wuːnd/, rhyming with "tuned"), and only the surrounding sentence tells a reader which is meant. "She wound the bandage around the wound" contains both words, pronounced differently, spelled the same — a genuine trap for anyone reading unfamiliar text out loud.
How it's actually used
"Wind" covers a wide spread of turning and coiling actions: you wind a mechanical clock or watch (tightening its spring), wind thread onto a bobbin, wind a scarf around your neck, and a river or road "winds" through a valley when it follows a twisting course. The phrasal verbs are everyday vocabulary in their own right — to "wind up" can mean to conclude ("let us wind up the meeting"), to end up in an unexpected place or state ("we wound up lost"), or to deliberately provoke someone ("he was only winding you up"), while to "wind down" means to relax or to gradually reduce activity. All of these take "wound" in the past: the meeting wound up, the spring wound tight, the path wound uphill.
Across the tense system
There is a real subtlety worth flagging: "wind" actually supports two different conjugations depending on meaning. In the coiling/turning sense it is the strong verb described here, giving "wound." But there is a separate, unrelated verb "wind" pronounced like the air noun (/wɪnd/) meaning either to make someone breathless ("the punch winded him") or, in hunting, to catch the scent of ("the hounds winded the fox") — and that verb is regular, giving "winded," not "wound." So "winded" is not an error; it is simply the past of a genuinely different verb that happens to share the spelling. Which past tense is correct depends entirely on which "wind" you mean.
Common real mistakes
The most common mistake is producing "winded" for the coiling sense — writing "he winded the clock" when the strong past "wound" is required ("he wound the clock"). This one is easy to slip into precisely because "winded" is a real word for the other, breathless sense, so it does not look obviously wrong. The reverse error also appears: using "wound" for the breathless sense ("the sprint wound him") where "winded" is correct. A separate reading error, rather than a writing one, is mispronouncing the past-tense "wound" as the injury "wound" (or vice versa) when reading aloud, since spelling gives no clue. Finally, learners sometimes assume the coiling verb and the air noun must be related and try to build a meaning bridge between them; there is none to find, and treating them as the coincidental homographs they are avoids a lot of wasted effort.
Examples
- She wound the old clock every morning before breakfast.
- The road wound its way up the mountainside in tight switchbacks.
- He has wound the rope into a neat coil and hung it on the hook.
- They wound up staying an extra week when their flight was cancelled.
- The nurse wound a fresh bandage around the wound. (both words, pronounced differently)
- We had wound down the campaign by early autumn.
- She is winding the thread onto the spindle by hand.
- The narrow lane wound between the stone cottages toward the harbour.
Memory trick
Slot "wind/wound/wound" (the coiling verb) into the same shelf as "find/found/found" and "bind/bound/bound" — same ancient ablaut pattern, same rhyme. Then keep two look-alikes filed completely separately: the noun "wind" (moving air, rhymes with pinned) and the regular verb "wind" meaning to make breathless or to scent (past tense "winded"). Same spelling, different words.