was
- 01 C1 Advanced
used instead of 'were' for more than one person in very casual or regional speech.
used as a non-standard or dialectal substitute for 'were' with plural subjects.
Simple“We was just sitting there when the rain started.”
In context“The witness claimed that the suspects was seen leaving the premises shortly before the alarm sounded.”
UsageCommon in certain British and American dialects, but avoided in formal writing and exams.
Teacher's tipLearners should recognize this in movies or songs but avoid using it themselves in professional or academic contexts.
Synonyms
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 is from Proto-Indo-European bʰuH- (“to become”). The forms 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”).
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
For Spanish speakers Spanish has no coda /z/, so the final consonant is devoiced and 'was' is pronounced /wɒs/ rather than /wɒz/.
Spanish splits 'to be' into 'ser' and 'estar'; both surface as 'was' in the past simple. 'Was' therefore covers permanent traits, temporary states, and locations alike, without the Spanish distinction.
For Mandarin speakers Mandarin lacks the voiced labiodental fricative /v/ and the voiced alveolar fricative /z/ in final positions; speakers may substitute the voiceless /s/, pronouncing 'was' as /wɒs/ or /wʌs/ instead of /wəz/.
Mandarin is a non-inflected language where time is indicated by particles like 了 (le) or aspect markers rather than verb conjugation. Consequently, learners often apply the base form 'be' or the present form 'is' regardless of the past time frame, or they redundanty add aspect markers to the English verb.
In Mandarin, the equative verb 是 (shì) is often omitted before adjectives (e.g., 我很忙 wǒ hěn máng, literally 'I very busy'). This leads to the omission of 'was' in past-tense descriptions, producing sentences like 'I busy yesterday' instead of 'I was busy yesterday'.
For Japanese speakers Japanese has no /ʌ/, so speakers substitute /a/. Japanese also allows no word-final consonant except /ɴ/, so an epenthetic /ɯ/ follows the /z/: 'was' surfaces as /wazɯ/ — ワズ (wazu), two moras rather than one closed syllable.
Japanese verbs do not conjugate based on grammatical person (first, second, or third), only for tense and formality. The distinction between 'was' and 'were' is frequently missed because Japanese uses 'deshita' (でした) for all persons in the past tense, leading to the use of 'was' for all subjects regardless of number.
Japanese uses the past tense of 'aru' (ある) to indicate existence (existence verbs). Because 'there was' translates to 'atta' (あった), learners often produce 'It was a fire' or 'I was a fire' when attempting to express 'There was a fire', mapping the Japanese subject marker 'ga' (が) incorrectly to the English subject position.