Question

Choose the correct passive form of the past tense from the options given below:

The flag ______ by the Chief Guest.

a. was hoist
b. was hoisted
c. hoisted
d. hoisting

Answer 1

Hint: To make the passive form of past tense we use was/were + past participle of the verb.

Complete answer:
If we go by the rule or trick given in the hint, we understand that the blank will be filled by an option that has was/were before the verb.

This makes it very clear that the last two options, c and d are incorrect. Moreover, option d is a verb in continuous tense without any helping verb of past tense. Option c is past indefinite tense, so it cannot be considered in passive form.

Now by eliminating the last two alternatives, we are left with just option a and b. Option a is incorrect as ‘hoist’ is the present indefinite tense of the root form of the verb, which cannot be used with the past tense helping verb.

This leaves us with just one alternative, which is, option b.
The flag was hoisted by the Chief Guest is the correct sentence as it has was/were+past participle of the verb.

Note: The passive form is used when the person or thing that did the action is unknown, the sentence is complete even without adding ‘by the Chief Guest’, but we use ‘by’ in a passive form to identify the doer of the action.