Question

Fill in the blank with the past tense form of the verb.
He _________ his face with a handkerchief. (Dry)
a) dryed
b) dryied
c) dried
d) dry

Answer 1

Hint:Tenses determine the form of the verb under certain given conditions. One of the three major forms of verbs is the past tense, describing an action that took place in the past or recently stopped, depending on the circumstance mentioned. It is subdivided into simple past, past continuous, past perfect and past perfect continuous, to be used in specific conditions. Here, the simple past tense of the verb is asked for. Dry is a physical verb.

Complete answer:
Dry as stated above is a physical verb and to convert it into the past tense, the ‘y’ is replaced with ‘ied’.
Now, looking at the options given above,
dryed: there is no such word as dryed and hence is not the correct option.
Dryied: When changing dry to past tense, we replace ‘y’ with ‘ied’ and not add ied as a suffix to the infinitive of the verb.
Dried: this is the correct form of the verb with the replacement of ‘y’ with ‘ied’ to give the word dried.
Dry: it is the infinitive form of the verb. It is not the past tense
It is true that some verbs do not change when converted to past or past participle, such as put, cut, shut and few more.
Hence, Option c, is the correct answer to the above question.

Note:
Do not replace or confuse Option b with Option c, since the past tense form of the word, dry is dried with replacement of a letter, not by adding a suffix.
Eg: Present tense: It is better to dry the clothes under the sun rays
Past tense: The clothes are dried and can be folded easily.