Past Tense of “withdraw”
The past tense of withdraw is withdrew; the past participle is withdrawn.
Why “withdraw” behaves this way
"Withdraw" prefixes "with-" (an older sense of "against" or "away from," not the modern sense of accompaniment) onto "draw," itself from Old English "dragan," a Class VI strong verb whose conjugation draw/drew/drawn is one of the more durable in the language, essentially unchanged across a thousand-plus years of recorded use. Because "draw" conjugates this way, the prefixed compound "withdraw" inherited that identical pattern automatically, giving "withdrew" and "withdrawn" rather than any independent development. The base verb "draw" itself is one of the most semantically productive verbs in English, spawning compounds like "drawback," "withdraw," and "drawbridge," all built on the same core sense of pulling something toward or away from a fixed point.
The prefix "with-" in this older "against/away" sense survives today in only a small handful of English words — "withstand," "withhold," "withdraw" — all of which describe some form of resistance or removal rather than accompaniment, a genuinely confusing fact for modern speakers since "with" everywhere else in the language means the opposite, togetherness rather than opposition or separation. This older sense of "with" is a distant cousin of the German preposition "wider" (against), confirming that the two languages once shared this now largely lost meaning before English narrowed "with" almost entirely to its modern, accompanying sense.
The common confusion
The main confusion for learners is mixing up "withdrew" and "withdrawn" in the perfect tense ("she has withdrew her application" instead of the correct "has withdrawn"), the same simple-past-versus-participle slip that affects "draw/drew/drawn" itself. A separate, more etymological confusion involves the prefix "with-" itself, which modern speakers often assume must relate to togetherness, when in this specific group of words it actually signals resistance or separation, an inherited meaning from an older stage of English. A third, more clinical confusion involves distinguishing "withdrawal" (the noun, describing physical symptoms or a bank transaction) from "withdrawn" (the adjective describing personality), two related but grammatically distinct forms that a reader must track carefully in medical writing.
How it's actually used
"Withdraw" covers a remarkably wide range of contexts while keeping a consistent core sense of removal or retreat: withdrawing money from a bank, withdrawing troops from a conflict, withdrawing a statement, and withdrawing socially from other people all share the same underlying image of pulling something back or away, whether the something is cash, an army, a claim, or oneself. In medical writing, "withdrawal" also describes the physical and psychological symptoms of stopping a substance, a specialized clinical noun sense built directly on the same core meaning of removal. Academic writing also uses "withdraw from a course," a specific administrative process distinct from simply failing or dropping out, with its own formal procedures and deadlines at most institutions.
Across the tense system
The passive voice is extremely common in financial, military, and legal writing — "the funds were withdrawn before the account was frozen," "troops have been withdrawn from the region" — since these contexts typically emphasize the outcome of the removal rather than foregrounding exactly who performed it. The perfect tense also appears constantly in diplomatic and political reporting summarizing a gradual, ongoing process, as in "the country has steadily withdrawn from international agreements over the past decade."
Common real mistakes
The most common error is confusing "withdrew" and "withdrawn" in the perfect tense, exactly mirroring the same mix-up that affects the base verb "draw." Much less frequently, writers produce the overregularized "withdrawed," occurring mainly in early learner English rather than adult writing, given how frequently this verb appears in everyday financial contexts. A third error, seen in psychological and clinical writing, is confusing the adjective "withdrawn" (socially distant or reserved) with the ordinary passive participle, which can create ambiguity in a sentence like "the patient was withdrawn" without further context clarifying whether this describes personality or an action taken by someone else.
Examples
- She withdrew a hundred dollars from the ATM.
- The troops have withdrawn from the contested region.
- He withdrew his application after accepting another offer.
- The candidate has withdrawn from the race entirely.
- They withdrew quietly, unwilling to cause a scene.
- The company withdrew its offer at the last minute.
Memory trick
Remember it inherits everything from plain "draw," prefix and all: if you know "draw/drew/drawn," you already know "withdraw/withdrew/withdrawn" — whether the subject is cash from an ATM, troops from a border, or a candidate's name from a ballot.