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FYI, the past-tense of the verb "lead" is "led", not its homophone noun "lead".


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"lead -> led" (past tense of the verb "to lead") is also a pretty common one for native speakers.

The past tense of "lead" will be dictionary-accepted as "lead" within your lifetime.

The past tense of "lead" (rhymes with bead) is not also "lead".

When did the word "led" disappear from the English language?


I flagged this for a typo in the title. It needs to be either "leads" or "led" to be grammatically correct, with "led" being the more likely choice given that the event was in the past.

> Then the present and past tense of "lead" would have different spellings in addition to different pronunciations.

They already do have different spellings - lead and led.


That lead to (no pun intended)

Apologies for an OT nitpick: the past tense of lead is led.


>Funnily enough you can read the "read" in my sentence above as both present or past tense. It both works but would be pronounced differently.

I hate the recent trend of writing "lead" to mean both "lead" as in "leader" and "led" as in, well, led.

Seems it was just a decade or two ago when the two were used distinctively, but some time in the late '10s it all just became "lead".

eg: "The army is led well by the general." vs. "The army is lead well by the general."


What is the correct past tense of lead? I thought it was “led”, but I can’t remember having ever read any other form?

What often irks me, as a non-native speaker, is the wrong subjunctive (if that’s what it’s called). People say and write all the time “I wish you were there”, when they mean “I wish you had been there”. At least I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s supposed to be…


Meh. Grammar, in general, is on a steep suckiness trend.

For example, when was the last time you saw someone on the web actually use the correct past tense of "lead (verb, transitive)"?


I've not seen this before. To me that reads like mixed tense, where lead (rhyming with steed) is the present tense of led

Ah, I didn't note the past tense. Sorry for my oversight.

Then there's the ongoing weakening of strong verbs.

The past tense of "write" is not "writed". The past tense of "stand" is not "standed".


If "she lead the team" were in the present tense, it would be a gross foreign-speaker error; no native speaker is going to mess up our vestigial 3sg verb rule.

But as with lose/"loose", I don't think this is a pronunciation change in progress; I think it's just a spelling mistake, by analogy to read/read.


Oops, yeah. That wasn't supposed to be past tense.

Note the past tense.

Not only that, but neither "driven" nor "drove" is a regular past-tense form. That would be "drived", a use I haven't heard from anyone over two years of age.

Thanks for correcting, I meant the past tense, not a native English speaker, fixed run -> ran.

Why the past tense?

https://theprodigy.com/#live


You're using the past tense. Sorry to say, still the case.
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