What is the past tense of “read”? Is it “reed”?

Hint: This question is from the topic of ‘forms of verbs’ in English Grammar. The past tense is a verb tense used for a past activity or a past state of being. Here ‘Read’ is an irregular verb.

Complete answer:
Verbs are words that tell us about the actions of the subject. They are also called ‘action words’. There are three basic forms of verbs which are used in different tenses in the English grammar. These forms are base, past and past participle forms. These are also called 1st, 2nd and 3rd forms. Based on these different forms verbs are of two types. They are regular and irregular verbs.

A regular verb follows a typical conjugation pattern. For this pattern, we take the base word and use it as the 1st form or sometimes add an –s depending on the pronouns. Then we add –ed to the base form and use it as the 2nd and the 3rd form. For e.g.
1st Form – I call her every day.
2nd Form – I called her yesterday.
3rd Form – I have called her.

The word ‘read’, which is given in the question, is an irregular verb. Irregular verbs are verbs which do not follow the above given typical pattern. They have a variety of patterns. The pattern to which our question concerns, is that all three forms of the verb are written as the same word. It is called the constant group.
Therefore,
1st Form – I read every day.
2nd Form – I read it yesterday.
3rd Form – I have read this book.

The important point here is that though the spellings of the words are the same, the 1st and the 2nd forms of ‘read’ are pronounced differently. The 1st form is pronounced as ‘REED’ and the 2nd form is pronounced as ‘RED’. Also, the 3rd form is pronounced as ‘RED’.

Thus, the past tense of ‘read’ is ‘read’ (pronounced as red).

Note:
Some other patterns that irregular verbs follow are;
2nd and 3rd forms are same –
- I cannot find it.
- I found it
- I have found it.

1st and 3rd forms are same -
- I come here every day.
- I came here yesterday.
- I have come back.