Past Tense of Drink: Drank or Drunk?
To drink (present tense), drank (simple past tense); and drunk (past participle).
The meaning of “drink”
The word drink, defined by the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, is “to take liquid into the mouth and swallow it.” Drink is a fundamental verb in English, referring to the act of consuming beverages for sustenance, pleasure, or refreshment.
To drink is the present tense form of the verb, drank is the past simple, and drunk is the past participle form of the verb. This makes the verb, to drink, irregular, and a part of the class of verbs with 3 forms (like drink/drank/drunk). See the chart:
| Base Verb | Past Tense | Past Participle |
| wear | wore | worn |
| tear | tore | torn |
| swear | swore | sworn |
| break | broke | broken |
| drink | drank | drunk |
Conjugations of the verb drink
| Tense | Present | Past | Future |
| Simple | I drink | I drank | I will drink |
| Continuous | I am drinking | I was drinking | I will be drinking |
| Perfect | I have drunk | I had drunk | I will have drunk |
| Perfect Continuous | I have been drinking | I had been drinking | I will have been drinking |
Tenses of ‘drink‘
Drink is in the present tense: He always drinks water with his meals.
Drank is the simple past: She drank a glass of milk before bed.
Drunk is the past participle: He had already drunk his coffee by the time I arrived.
Past tense: She drank three cups of tea yesterday.
Past participle: The guests had already drunk all the wine by the time we got to the party.
Examples of drink in the present tense (in sentences)
- Remember to drink plenty of water throughout the day.
- I usually drink coffee in the morning to wake up.
- They drink herbal tea to relax before bedtime.
- It’s important to drink responsibly when consuming alcohol.
- He doesn’t like to drink soda because of the sugar content.
Examples odf rank in the past tense (in sentences)
- She drank orange juice for breakfast every morning.
- We drank hot chocolate by the fireplace during the winter.
- The athletes drank energy drinks before the competition.
- He drank a glass of water after his workout at the gym.
- They drank cocktails at the beach party last night.
Examples of the past participle drunk (in sentences)
- The guests had already drunk all the champagne before dinner was served.
- She had never drunk whiskey before, but she tried it at the party.
- The bottle of wine was half drunk when they found it.
- He had drunk too much alcohol and couldn’t drive home.
- They had drunk so much coffee that they couldn’t sleep.
Synonyms of drink
- Consume
- Imbibe
- Sip
- Swallow
- Guzzle
- Quaff
- Sip
- Indulge
- Partake
- Ingest
- Lap Up
- Slurp
Idioms with drink
- Drink like a fish (to drink alcohol excessively)
- Drink someone under the table (to outdrink someone in a competition)
- Drink to someone’s health (to make a toast in someone’s honor)
- Drink up (to finish drinking what’s in your glass)
- Drink the Kool-Aid (to blindly accept a belief or ideology)
Origin of the word/verb drink
From etymology online on drink (v.):
Old English drincan “to drink,” also “to swallow up, engulf” (class III strong verb; past tense dranc, past participle druncen), from Proto-Germanic *drinkan “to drink” (source also of Old Saxon drinkan, Old Frisian drinka, Dutch drinken, Old High German trinkan, German trinken, Old Norse drekka, Swedish dricka, Gothic drigkan “to drink”), from PIE root *dhreug- “to draw liquid.
