遅れる (okureru) conjugation
to (be) become late
遅れる (おくれる, okureru) is an ichidan verb. Ichidan verbs are the tidy ones: drop the final る and add the ending. Nothing inside the word ever changes. Every form below is tappable — hear it, then say it back.
Conjugation table
| Form | Plain (casual) | Polite (~ます) | When you use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dictionary / plain | 遅れる okureru | 遅れます okuremasu | The form you look up. Also the casual present and future. |
| Plain negative | 遅れない okurenai | 遅れません okuremasen | “doesn’t / won’t”. From here it conjugates like an i-adjective. |
| Plain past | 遅れた okureta | 遅れました okuremashita | The casual past — same ending as the te-form, with た/だ. |
| Plain past negative | 遅れなかった okurenakatta | 遅れませんでした okuremasendeshita | “didn’t”. The negative past, still i-adjective-shaped. |
| Te-form | 遅れて okurete | — | The connector: requests, linking clauses, ~ている. |
| Progressive (~ている) | 遅れている okureteiru | 遅れています okureteimasu | “is ~ing”, or an ongoing resulting state. |
| Desire (~たい) | 遅れたい okuretai | 遅れたいです okuretaidesu | “want to ~”. Behaves as an i-adjective. |
| Volitional | 遅れよう okureyou | 遅れましょう okuremashou | “let’s ~” / “I think I’ll ~”. |
| Potential | 遅れられる okurerareru | 遅れられます okureraremasu | “can ~”. What you could do; the object often takes が. |
| Passive | 遅れられる okurerareru | 遅れられます okureraremasu | “is ~ed”. Also the honorific and the suffering passive. |
| Causative | 遅れさせる okuresaseru | 遅れさせます okuresasemasu | Make or let someone do it. |
| Causative-passive | 遅れさせられる okuresaserareru | 遅れさせられます okuresaseraremasu | Be made to do it — the long one. |
| Imperative | 遅れろ okurero | 遅れてください okuretekudasai | Blunt order. Use ~てください in real life. |
| Prohibitive | 遅れるな okureruna | — | “don’t!” — dictionary form + な. |
| Conditional (~ば) | 遅れれば okurereba | — | “if ~”. General rules and hypotheticals. |
| Conditional (~たら) | 遅れたら okuretara | — | “if / when ~”. The everyday conditional. |
🔊 Tap any Japanese word to hear it spoken.
Why it conjugates this way
Ichidan verbs are the tidy ones: drop the final る and add the ending. Nothing inside the word ever changes.
See the full rules on the verb conjugation guide.
