How to Use Wore or Worn? (Explained, With Examples)

August 6, 2025

5 min read

By Yash, D

To wear is the present tense; wore is the past tense, and worn is the past participle form of the verb.

How to Use Wore or Worn? (Explained, With Examples)

The verb to wear in text conversation. By Gflex on Canva. — The verb to *wear* in text conversation. By *Gflex* on Canva.

What’s the past tense of “wear”?

Have you worn that shirt already? Will you wear it again? If the grammatical aspects of the verb wear cause confusion, then you’re in the ‘write‘ place. Stay as long as you like, there’s no such thing as wearing your welcome!

👍🏼Usage Note

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You’ve worn those shoes to shreds.

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I wore the black sweater.

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She worn a red dress to the party last night.

✗
They weared their welcome.

"Wore" in the past simple tense in sentences.

Forms of the verb wear

To start with a definition, the verb wear is understood as ‘to have something on your body as a piece of clothing, a decoration, etc.’

Tense:	Sentence examples:
Simple present tense (third-person singular):	She *wears* a beautiful dress to the party.
Present continuous tense:	I am *wearing* my new shoes today.
Present perfect tense:	He *has* *worn* that old hat for years.
Present perfect continuous:	I *have* *been* *wearing* these shoes for years.
Simple past tense:	You wore that shirt yesterday!
Past continuous:	I *was* *wearing* a raincoat when the storm started.
Past perfect tense:	The sheets *had* *worn* thin.
Past perfect continuous:	I *had been wearing* the same clothes for days when they found me.
Simple future tense:	I will wear the bracelet you got me tomorrow night.
Future continuous tense:	Tomorrow, I will be wearing my new sunglasses.
Future perfect tense:	By next summer, she will have worn her wedding ring for ten years.
Future perfect continuous:	In six months, I will have been wearing this uniform for two years.

Here’s a chart with verb forms similar to wear/wore/worn, insofar as they also have three verb forms in total (and are irregular verbs that do not end in –ed in their past verb forms):

base verb	past tense	past participle
wear	wore	worn
tear	tore	torn
swear	swore	sworn
steal	stole	stolen
break	broke	broken

💡Grammar Tip

Remember to always pair participles with an auxiliary! For perfect tenses, use ‘have’, ‘has’, or ‘had’. For continuous, use a form of ‘to be’.

When to use wore vs. worn

Form	Sentence Example
Past tense (wore)	Both men wore confident smiles.
Past perfect (worn)	The sheets had been worn thin.

Worn, which is the past participle form of wear, uses an auxiliary verb, ‘had‘ in order to form the past perfect tense or aspect in grammar. The past perfect tense, also called pluperfect, is used to describe when something happens before another event that also took place in the past.

The simple past tense is much simpler, as its name suggests, and does not use supplementary helper verbs to show tense. Nevertheless, this is how we tell apart the past simple tense vs. the past perfect: when the past participle verb form joins the auxiliary, ‘had‘, this is the past perfect. To be sure, the simple past tense, wore, can stand on its own in sentences as a whole tense.

“Wear” / “wore” / “worn”, used in sentences

Form	Sentence Examples
Present (wear)	The carpets are starting to wear. She always wears black. Hannah preferred to wear her hair short. I’ve been wearing that jacket for years.
Past/Past participle (wore/worn)	I’d worn a blue shirt to the funeral, but my dad asked me to change. The water had worn a channel in the rock. Those curtains have worn very well. You wore that shirt yesterday! I wore my new slippers for the first time last night.

Phrases with wear

Phrase	Meaning
wear thin	To become less effective, less convincing, or less acceptable over time.
to wear a long face	To look sad or disappointed.
to wear your heart on your sleeve	To openly show your emotions or feelings.
wear and tear	Damage or deterioration resulting from ordinary use.
the worse for wear	In poor condition from being used a lot.

Origin of the verb wear

Form	Origin / Etymology
Old English	werian — “to clothe, put on, cover up”
Proto-Germanic	wasīn-* (source also of Old Norse verja, Old High German werian, Gothic gawasjan “to clothe”)
PIE root	wos-eyo-, suffixed form of wes- (2) “to clothe,” extended form of root *eu- “to dress.”

Worksheet: Irregular verbs

Practice: Forms of “Wear”

FAQs

What is the past tense of wear?
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According to the post, the simple past tense of wear is “wore”. For example, “You wore that shirt yesterday!” It is an irregular verb, meaning it doesn’t end in -ed.

What is worn?
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According to the post, “worn” is the past participle form of wear. It is used with an auxiliary verb like “had” to form the past perfect tense, as in “The sheets had worn thin.”

When do I use wore?
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You use “wore” for the simple past tense of wear. It describes something that happened in the past and stands alone in the sentence without a helper verb. Example: “You wore that shirt yesterday!”

When do I use worn?
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You use “worn” as the past participle, often with an auxiliary verb like “had” to form the past perfect tense. This describes something before another past event. Example: “The sheets had worn thin.”

How are wore and worn different?
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“Wore” is the simple past tense and stands alone (e.g., “Both men wore smiles”). “Worn” is the past participle and needs an auxiliary verb like “had” for the past perfect tense (e.g., “The sheets.

Yash, D. "How to Use Wore or Worn? (Explained, With Examples)." Grammarflex, Aug 24, 2025, https://grammarflex.com/wore-or-worn/.

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