Thursday, May 28, 2009

Drink, Drank, Drunk

Everyone knows what drink means. The confusion comes in when figuring out when to use drank and when to use drunk (as a verb, not the other meaning mostly everyone is familiar with). It's actually pretty simple.

Drank is the simple past of drink.
  • Example: I drank two glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice this morning.
Drunk is also the past tense of drink but is only used with the verb "have."
  • Example: Instead of orange juice, I had drunk two glasses of wine and promptly felt the effects. I have drunk my way through this bottle of wine in record time.
Memorization tip: If you do not use the verb have you do not use drunk.

35 comments:

  1. Usage note
    As with many verbs of the pattern sing, sang, sung and ring, rang, rung, there is some confusion about the forms for the past tense and past participle of drink. The historical reason for this confusion is that originally verbs of this class in Old English had a past-tense singular form in a but a past-tense plural form in u. Generally the form in a has leveled out to become the standard past-tense form: We drank our coffee. However, the past-tense form in u, though considered nonstandard, occurs often in speech: We drunk our coffee.
    The standard and most frequent form of the past participle of drink in both speech and writing is drunk : Who has drunk all the milk? However, perhaps because of the association of drunk with intoxication, drank is widely used as a past participle in speech by educated persons and must be considered an alternate standard form: The tourists had drank their fill of the scenery. See also drunk.

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  2. I'm concerned that this is a grammar mistake blog, because you seem to have made a (plural) mistake in your first example. Shouldn't it be " I drank two glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice this morning.", rather than "I drank two glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice this morning."?

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  3. Since this is a site for grammar, maybe you should correct the "drunk" sentence with "two glasses" plural instead of "two glass"

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  4. I a just glad for the info and the comments!

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  5. For a '.co.uk' website, why is memorisation spelt with a z.
    Otherwise, very helpful!

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    Replies
    1. Because, both spellings a correct. The rule that -ize is only used in American English is a myth. See what the OED says: www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/-ize-ise-or-yse.

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  6. a Good one - very nice info. Thanks a lot

    http://www.vanzzsolutions.com/

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  7. its
    drunk = past participle

    drank = past

    drink = present

    will drink = future

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  8. oh my. some people are so funny going on about the glass or glasses mistake. really need to stop masturbating over grammar sites and lose their virginity with a real girl.

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  9. what about "Then it won't get drunk.", you can't use the have in that particular sentence and according to your principle you'd have to say "Then it won't get drank". which one is correct?

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  10. In reference to the phrase, "then it won't get drunk."
    If you're referring to consumption as opposed to intoxication, the sentence should be written, "Then it will not be drunk." The previous sentence uses the future passive form of the verb "drink."
    "Will" indicates future tense and for the drink to be consumed by a subject would indicate that the sentence is passive. All passive forms of the verb are "drunk" except when it is past tense and continuous. In which case the verb would be "drinking".
    Example: "I had been drinking all night before I finally rested this morning"

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  11. I wanna thanks to a great extent for providing such informative and qualitative material therefore often.Grammarly reviews

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  12. Not true. The past participle can be used with "to be." "The soda is to be drunk with a straw."

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  13. In the above would be helpful to add that the past participle is used both with 'have' in perfect tenses and with 'be' in passives.

    Maybe the memorization tip should be - if it is not a perfect tense (I have drunk etc) or a passive form (the wine was drunk by etc) you use drank!

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  14. In the above would be helpful to add that the past participle is used both with 'have' in perfect tenses and with 'be' in passives.

    Maybe the memorization tip should be - if it is not a perfect tense (I have drunk etc) or a passive form (the wine was drunk by etc) you use drank!

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  16. Starting to improve your grammar from the very start level as to learn up to deal with different forms of verbs and also to learn about the correct spellings will be so good element of it. english grammar online check

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  17. the person that said 'it won't be drank' is wrong; the person that used 'it won't be drunk' is the correct way....NOW, LET'S PUT OUR 'ONLY' IN THE CORRECT PLACE. IT IS ONLY USED TWICE A DAY (only is modifying used). For frequency usage, the sentence should read...It is used ONLY twice a day. (this now tells us that we cannot use it more than two times...as in a prescription).

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  18. It is very interesting to read the article http://royalediting.com/what-you-should-know-about-national-grammar-day about it. Your site was exactly what I wanted to find. Thank you for sharing such a valuable information. Keep it up! Thank you.

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  19. Who drank it? A correct or wrong sentence?

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  20. I had an argument with my boyfriend on this. While on the phone I said to him, "You probably shouldn't have used my half drunk bottle of water to clean out your cut." He laughed at me and said it should be "half drank" but that doesn't sound right to me. Which past tense form of drink is correct in the sentence?

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  21. Memorization tip is so cool? Do you have any similar advices for remembering punctuation rules. It's just I am very bad with it and I even use sentence checker for this purpose. It will be great to hear from you!

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  22. I remember how hard it was for me to learn all the exceptions of irregular verbs! essay-editor.net has a list of frequent grammar mistakes!

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  23. I have already drank my coffee...
    I have already drunk my coffee...
    I have already drunken my coffee.

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  24. What about this sentence: "The products can be drank (or drunk) hot or cold." Which is correct?
    Or "These products are meant to be drank/drunk in between meals."

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  25. Here, we will discuss form of verbs. Every person have not knowledge about form of verbs. Some people have not knowledge about drink, drank and drunk. But you should cover this topic and learn where we can use drink drank and drunk. I will tell you about this form of verb. We use drink in present indefinite tense and future indefinite tense. We use drank in past indefinite tense and use drunk in present perfect tense, past perfect tense and future perfect tense. If you have any confusion about form of verbs, you can get help from the expert writers of Master dissertation writing service.

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