Ese vestido le sentaba de maravilla.

English Translation

That dress fit her perfectly.

That dress fitted her perfectly.

Are you sure? As a non-native English speaker, I’ve learnt that in the intransitive sense, it’s “fit, fit, fit”. Used transitively, it’s the regular “fit, fitted, fitted”: “the tailor fitted the dress on her”.

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Yes.

(Minimum 20 characters). .

I’m a native English speaker, and the original sentence in this case is correct, that is to say “That dress fit her perfectly”.

I can’t comment on any distinction between transitive and intransitive usage as mentioned by @morbrorper, but the use of “fitted” in this sentence does not sound right to my ear. That is not to say whether it is right or wrong, it is just the way that I as a native speaker (British/Australian) perceive it.

However, I can categorically state that the original sentence as provided by Clozemaster is correct English.

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So I decided to have a quick look on the internet as this did intrigue me.

According to several sources on the internet it appears that “fit” and “fitted” are both equally valid as simple past tense forms and as past participles.

That means that both the original sentence and the modified sentence are correct English.

Taking Wiktionary as an example, if you look at the page for fit and scroll down to English and look at the section for Verb, and then look at the examples.

In Example 3, you will see the sample sentence “That plug fit into the other socket, but it won’t go in this one” using the past simple verb form “fit”. If you then click on the small down arrow next to the word “quotations” you will see an example where Kate Winslet states “I think he actually could have fitted on that bit of door” and in this case she uses the past simple verb form “fitted”. So here we have two sample sentences as examples of intransitive usage, one for each past simple verb form “fit” and “fitted”.

Other commenters suggest that there is a difference between American and British English (or North American English compared to other regions), and that “fit” is more common in North America and “fitted” in the rest of the world.

Now Kate Winslet is British, and she said “fitted” in that quote, so that would fit that suggestion … but I thought that I was British :astonished:. Do I need to return my passport?

On this site there are two graphs looking at usage of the phrases “the shoe fitted” and “the shoe fit” in written American English and British English and their relative development over time. The graphs show that for American English the use of “fit” has become dominant, but for British English both forms seem to be used in equal measure. Phew, I can keep my British passport :grin:.

So in summary, it appears that both “fit” and “fitted” would be valid verb forms to use in this sentence.

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