was.
first-person singular simple past indicative of be.
Meaning & usage
first-person singular simple past indicative of be.
I was castigated and scorned.
third-person singular simple past indicative of be.
It was a really humongous slice of cake.
Used in phrases with existential there when the semantic subject is (usually third-person) plural.
There was three of them there.
second-person singular simple past indicative of be; were.
first-person plural simple past indicative of be; were.
third-person plural simple past indicative of be; were.
Where this word comes from
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂wes- Proto-Germanic *was Old English wæs Middle English was English was From Middle English was, from Old English wæs, from Proto-Germanic *was, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂we-h₂wós-e from *h₂wes- (“to reside”), whence also vestal. See also Scots was, West Frisian was (dated, wie is generally preferred today), Dutch was, Low German was, German war, Swedish var); also Kamkata-viri vos-, Sanskrit उवास (uvā́sa). The paradigm of “to be” has been since the time of Proto-Germanic a synthesis of three originally distinct verb stems. The infinitive form be and its derived forms been and being are from Proto-Indo-European *bʰuH- (“to become”). The present-tense indicative forms am, is, and are are both derived from Proto-Indo-European *h₁es- (“to be”). Lastly, the past forms starting with w- such as was and were are from Proto-Indo-European *h₂wes- (“to reside”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.