The Past Tense of Show: Showed or Shown, and Why This Verb Is Half Irregular

You are doing dictation on an office conversation. The speaker drops a line about the report, you write "He show me the numbers this morning", then the red squiggles hit the second word right away. The real sentence is "He showed me the numbers this morning". Short answer first: the simple past of show is showed, and the past participle of show is shown. The V-ing form is showing, third person singular is shows.

Put those two forms side by side and the odd part jumps out. showed has the -ed ending like a normal regular verb, while shown has the -n ending like known, grown, thrown. A verb that is half regular and half irregular — and that is the first hard part. The second hard part is in the ear: the final /d/ sound of showed nearly vanishes when the sentence runs fast, while shown sounds the same as shone, the past form of shine, in American English.

This article goes through the whole chain: a table of five forms, why show is only irregular on one half, where showed sits and where shown sits, meaning pairs around show and show up that are easy to mix up, then the part that matters most for listening practice — how these two forms sound in speech at normal speed.

• Table of show's forms, and why it is only half irregular
• Where showed goes, where shown goes
• Hearing showed and shown in real sentences
• Common phrases and collocations with showed, shown
• Mistakes Vietnamese speakers often make with show
• Quick exercise
• Frequently asked questions

Table of show's forms, and why it is only half irregular

Five forms, compact in one table. Pronunciation is written in American English; where British English differs clearly, that is noted too.

The V2 row and the V3 row tell two different stories. showed is built by the rule: take show and add -ed. shown is not — it takes the -n ending, the ending that only appears on strong verbs. In the irregular verb table you learned at school, show usually gets grouped with know and grow, and that makes a lot of people think its V2 must also change the vowel into something like shew or showd.

Here is what actually happened. show was originally a regular verb, with showed in both slots. But it has a very large, very common group of neighbors, all ending in the diphthong /oʊ/ and all with participles ending in -own: know becomes known, grow becomes grown, blow becomes blown, throw becomes thrown. Hanging around together long enough, show borrowed the -n ending for the participle slot, while the simple past slot kept -ed. The result is a half-and-half verb.

show is not the only case. sew splits into sewed and sewn, sow into sowed and sown, prove into proved but the participle proven is gradually pushing out proved in American English. This whole group moves the same way: simple past keeps the regular form, participle picks up the -n ending. You will still run into "has showed" in older writing and in some dictionaries listed as a variant, but in exams, in work emails, and in any text today, the form to write is shown.

That neighbor group is worth learning together because they share one ear pattern. The past of know gives you the pair knew and known, where V2 changes the vowel completely while show does not. The past of grow has grew and grown, a pair learners often write backwards. The past of throw has threw sounding exactly like through — a separate listening trap that show does not have. If you are reviewing the whole system, the article on English grammar puts tenses and verb groups in their proper places.

Where showed goes, where shown goes

The shortest rule: showed stands on its own as the main verb; shown always needs have, has, had, or a form of be in front. Because shown is a participle, it is also the form used in every passive sentence — and this is where show shows up surprisingly often, because written English often uses the passive for data and results.

The part that is easier to mix up is not form but meaning. show is a broad verb, and Vietnamese packs a lot of things into "cho xem". The six pairs below separate usages that often get blurred.

There is one more point that often gets skipped. When show means to appear, to be visible, it does not need an object and it does not need any special auxiliary: "The stain still showed after two washes" means the stain was still visible. The sentence "It showed" standing alone is a complete sentence — meaning you can tell right away just by looking. Learners rarely meet this usage, so when they hear it they often think they missed an object coming after.

Hearing showed and shown in real sentences

This is not in the verb conjugation table, and it is what decides whether you write it correctly or not. On paper showed and show differ by two letters. In sound, they differ by exactly one thin /d/, and that sound is the first thing to go when people speak normally.

showed before a consonant: the /d/ sound nearly disappears. In "showed me", the tongue never gets to release /d/ before the lips close for /m/, and the sentence comes out "show-me". In "showed them", the /d/ merges straight into /ð/ as "show-them". In "showed no interest", you hear "show-no interest". That is why "He showed me the numbers" gets written as "He show me the numbers" so often.

showed before a vowel: the /d/ comes back and links to the next word. "showed us" becomes one block "show-dus", "showed it to me" becomes "show-dit-tuh-me", "showed everyone" becomes "show-devryone". Here you hear /d/ clearly, but it sits at the start of the next word, not at the end of showed — so splitting by ear puts the break in the wrong place.

shown and shone sound the same in American English. shone is the past of shine, and Americans pronounce it /ʃoʊn/, exactly like shown. "The light has shone all night" and "The light has shown all night" sound identical — only context separates them. British speakers pronounce shone as /ʃɒn/, close to gone, so this trap exists only in American English.

shown and showing differ by one unstressed syllable. In casual speech, the -ing ending shrinks to -in, so "he's showing you" comes out "he's showin you", and to an untrained ear it is only a tiny bit more than "he's shown you" at the tail end.

have and has before shown are nearly invisible. In real speech, "They have shown" is "they've shown"; the 've is reduced to a single /v/ sound attached to the subject. Miss it and you write "they shown" — grammatically wrong, yet your ear finds it perfectly natural.

show up and showed up stick together as one block. "show up" links into "show-wup"; "showed up" becomes "show-dup". Learners used to seeing two separate words often write "she shoulda up" or drop up entirely.

The table below puts three things side by side: the original sentence, how it actually sounds when spoken fast, and the transcription learners often get wrong. The middle column spells out sounds the way your ear catches them, not standard phonetic notation.

Look at the third column and the errors fall into three very clear groups. The first group is dropped final sounds: show instead of showed, happening exactly where the next word starts with a consonant. The second group is wrong word boundaries: "show does" instead of "showed us", because the /d/ has run into the neighboring word. The third group is missing unstressed function words: "they shown" instead of "they've shown", and "is shown" instead of "has shown" — you miss the smallest part of the sentence. These three groups need three different fixes, and you only know which group you're in when you see your own transcription next to the transcript.

That pattern shows up very clearly in a dictation listening session on WELE. You hear a sentence, write it down as you hear it, and the grading zeroes in on the word that's off. When the crossed-out word is showed and you wrote show, you get a piece of information that a conjugation table never gives you: your ear heard the right verb but dropped the final sound, and it dropped it exactly before a consonant. Next time you hit "showed them", you already know what to listen for.

What sticks isn't the conjugation table but the moment you see where you slipped. Read the five-line table at the top of the article and ten minutes later you still remember that the V3 of show is shown, but your ear hasn't changed. Miss a sentence once, then replay the exact spot you missed — the next time your ear has a marker. If you want to understand why these final sounds disappear rather than assume your listening is weak, the connected speech article explains elision and linking for whole sentences. If you want to jump into real sentences right away, the podcast library has a transcript for every episode so you can check back.

Common phrases and collocations with showed, shown

show spawns a string of phrases that in real conversation you meet more often than bare show. The thirteen rows below gather the densest ones, all in past or participle form.

The last two rows in the table are worth pausing on because they belong to two different language registers. "showed him the door" is everyday speech, slightly sarcastic. "as shown in the chart" appears almost only in reports, slides, and academic writing, and it's one of those fixed passive collocations you'll read a lot if your work touches numbers. Same verb, two worlds.

One more detail. Change the form and you change the sense of time, like any other verb. "Two buyers showed interest last week" recounts a closed story. "Two buyers have shown interest" means they're still interested and you still have a chance. When listening, the cue to tell them apart is again the shortened have or has up front — exactly the piece most likely to vanish in fast speech.

Errors Vietnamese learners often make with show

have showed instead of have shown. This is the most common error and it has a reason: because showed is already a valid form, your hand keeps writing showed after have out of habit. You'll occasionally hear native speakers say "has showed", and some dictionaries still list it as an old variant. Hearing it doesn't mean you can use it. In exams and at work, after have, has, had, only shown.

The data shown that, missing the auxiliary. shown never acts as the main verb on its own. If the sentence has no have, has, had, or be before it, the form you need is showed or shows. "The data showed that" or "The data has shown that" — pick one.

Did she showed you. did already carries the past for the whole sentence, so the verb after it goes back to the base form. The correct sentence is "Did she show you the slides?". This error tends to pop up right when you're focused on remembering that the past of show is showed — and you remember a little too hard.

Reading showed as two syllables. Many people pronounce it "show-ed" because they see the letter e in -ed. showed has only one syllable, /ʃoʊd/; the -ed ending here is a single /d/ sound. -ed only becomes its own syllable when the verb ends in /t/ or /d/, like wanted and needed. show doesn't end in either of those.

Using show when the sentence needs show up. "He didn't show for the meeting" — native speakers do say that, but it's an informal shortcut. The full, safe form is "He didn't show up for the meeting". The other way around, don't write "show up the report" when you mean hand someone the report to look at; that sentence is "show the report to somebody".

Writing shown for shone and vice versa. These two words sound the same in American English but differ completely in meaning and in the root verb. shown is the participle of show. shone is the past and participle of shine, meaning to give off light. "The sun has shone all week" is about sunshine; "The chart has shown a drop" is about a chart. When dictating or transcribing, context is the only thing that saves you here.

Quick exercise

Eight sentences — fill in show, showed, or shown. Do all eight before you look at the answers below.

1. She ______ me her portfolio last Thursday.
2. The results have ______ a steady improvement.
3. Did anyone ______ you how the machine works?
4. Only three candidates ______ up for the interview.
5. We were ______ around the campus by a student.
6. As ______ in the table above, costs went down.
7. He has never ______ any interest in the project.
8. The old paint still ______ through the new coat.

Answers: 1. showed. 2. shown. 3. show. 4. showed. 5. shown. 6. shown. 7. shown. 8. showed.

Questions 3 and 6 are two worth pausing on. In question 3, did comes before the verb so it goes back to the base form, and this is where many people fill in showed because they're thinking about the past tense. Question 6 is the fixed phrase "as shown in", a shortened passive form so you must use the past participle, even though you don't see have or is anywhere in the sentence. If you got these two wrong, the section on where showed goes and where shown goes is worth reading again.

Frequently asked questions

What is the past tense of show?

The simple past of show is showed, the past participle is shown. showed acts as the main verb in simple past sentences, while shown always follows have, has, had, or a form of be.

Is show a regular or irregular verb?

Half and half. Simple past showed is formed regularly with -ed, but past participle shown takes the -n ending from the strong verb group like known and grown. Because it has one irregular slot, show still sits in the irregular verb table.

Have showed or have shown—which is correct?

have shown. The form have showed used to exist and you still hear it in everyday speech, but it's counted wrong on tests and in formal writing. After have, has, had, choose shown.

How many syllables does showed have?

One syllable, /ʃoʊd/. The -ed ending here is just a single /d/ sound stuck to the end. It only becomes its own syllable when the base verb ends in /t/ or /d/, for example wanted and needed; show doesn't.

Why does showed often get transcribed as show when listening?

Because the final /d/ gets swallowed when the next word starts with a consonant, and showed very often comes before me, them, us, no. The fix isn't relearning the rule but listening again to those exact pairs until your ear picks up the gap where the /d/ just disappeared.

How long before you can hear showed and shown in fast speech?

The rules part takes one session. The ear part depends on your current listening foundation, and the most straightforward way to measure is transcribe a few clips and count how many times you miss. The listening level test gives you a number to compare against after a few weeks.

The five-row table at the top of the page takes thirty seconds to read, and that's the entire easy part. The hard part is showed dropping the /d/ before consonants while shown sounds like shone—two things you only notice when your listening misses and you go back through your own transcript. Grab a short set with showed or shown and try dictation on one clip, then reread the table at the top and see if it still feels dry.