Græde | Danish Grammar

Græde means to cry or to weep. It is a strong verb with a striking past tense — græd, identical in spelling to the imperative and pronounced with a short vowel — and a participle, grædt, that ends in -t like a weak verb even though the verb is strong. This is one of those Danish verbs where the forms look deceptively simple but the past tense is easy to get wrong.

Principal parts

Infinitive	Present	Past	Past participle	Imperative
græde	græder	græd	grædt	græd

The perfect uses have: jeg har grædt, hun havde grædt. Græde describes an activity, not a change of place, so være never appears. Note that the past græd and the imperative græd are spelled the same — context (and the absence of a present -er) tells them apart.

💡

No subject agreement: jeg græder, barnet græder, alle græder. The single present form græder covers every person — there is no Danish equivalent of English she cries.

The ablaut pattern

Græde is strong: the past græd is formed by shortening and changing the stem vowel, not by adding a suffix. The long æ of the infinitive græde becomes the short, clipped æ of græd. The participle grædt then adds -t to that short stem.

There is no close English cognate to lean on here — cry, weep, and grieve are unrelated words — so this is a verb to learn by its own shape. The thing to fix in memory is that the past is græd (one syllable, short vowel), never the weak grædede. Group it mentally with other short strong pasts and consult the strong-verb overview for the wider family.

Barnet græder, fordi det er træt.

The child is crying because it's tired.

Hun græd hele vejen hjem.

She cried all the way home.

Jeg har aldrig grædt så meget til en film.

I've never cried so much at a film.

Sentence patterns

You cry over something with græde over:

Det nytter ikke at græde over spildt mælk.

It's no use crying over spilt milk.

You cry with an emotion using græde af + the feeling — note the preposition is af, not med:

De græd af glæde, da de så hinanden igen.

They cried with joy when they saw each other again.

To say someone burst into tears, Danish uses the fixed expression briste i gråd — and here we meet the noun gråd (crying, weeping, no plural). The verb briste (to burst) has the strong past brast:

Hun brast i gråd midt i talen.

She burst into tears in the middle of the speech.

The noun gråd also appears in være i gråd and tårevædet af gråd, but its most common home is briste/brast i gråd.

Græde and its noun gråd anchor a handful of everyday idioms worth recognising. Græde tørre tårer (cry dry tears) describes false or theatrical grief; græde sine modige tårer is its more sympathetic cousin. The expression det er til at græde over (it's enough to make you cry) registers exasperation as much as sorrow:

Priserne i år er simpelthen til at græde over.

This year's prices are simply enough to make you cry.

The participle grædt also feeds the compound adjective forgrædt (red-eyed from crying), useful for describing how someone looks after weeping:

Hun kom forgrædt ud fra samtalen.

She came out of the meeting red-eyed from crying.

You will also hear få grædt ud (to have a good cry, cry it all out), where the noun-like ud marks bringing the crying to completion — a very Danish way of treating an emotion as something you work through to the end.

Græde vs. tude vs. hulke

Danish has a small ladder of crying verbs, sorted by intensity and register.

Græde = cry, weep — the neutral, all-purpose verb, fine in any register.
Tude = blubber, bawl (informal/colloquial) — often used of children or, dismissively, of an adult crying over something minor.
Hulke = sob — crying with heaving breaths; more intense and more vivid than plain græde.

Hold nu op med at tude — det var bare en kommentar.

Stop blubbering — it was only a comment.

Han sad og hulkede i sofaen efter beskeden.

He sat sobbing on the sofa after the news.

Note the very common Danish construction sidde og græde (literally sit and cry) in that last example's neighbour. Danish pairs a posture verb — sidde, stå, ligge — with og plus another verb to express an ongoing action, where English would use the -ing form. So hun sidder og græder is not she sits and cries but she is crying. With græde this pattern is everywhere, because crying is so often something one does while sitting or lying down:

Lad hende være — hun ligger bare og græder lidt.

Leave her be — she's just lying there crying a little.

This is a genuine structural gap between the languages: English marks the continuous with -ing, while Danish recruits a posture verb plus og. Learners who translate she is crying word for word reach for a progressive that Danish does not have; the natural rendering is hun græder or, with the ongoing flavour, hun sidder og græder.

Common mistakes

❌ Hun grædede ved begravelsen.

Incorrect — græde is strong, so the weak -ede past is wrong.

✅ Hun græd ved begravelsen.

She wept at the funeral.

The past is the strong, one-syllable græd. The form grædede does not exist.

❌ Barnet var i en stor græde.

Incorrect — confusing the verb græde with the noun gråd.

✅ Barnet var i en stor gråd.

The child was crying hard.

The verb is græde; the noun (crying, tears) is gråd. They are different words — keep them apart, especially in the set phrase briste i gråd, never briste i græde.

❌ De græd med glæde.

Incorrect preposition — Danish cries af an emotion, not med.

✅ De græd af glæde.

They cried with joy.

❌ Jeg er grædt hele dagen.

Incorrect auxiliary — græde takes have in the perfect, not være.

✅ Jeg har grædt hele dagen.

I have been crying all day.

Key takeaways

græde · græder · græd · grædt — strong; the past græd is one short syllable, never grædede.
Perfect with have: har grædt. Never være.
The noun is gråd (crying); the verb is græde — don't merge them.
Cry over something, cry af an emotion, and briste/brast i gråd to burst into tears.

Now practice Danish

Reading grammar gets you part of the way. The exercises are where it sticks — free, no signup needed.

Start learning Danish→