Grow and shrink are the plainest opposites of size. To grow is to get bigger — gradually, naturally, from the inside: children, plants, companies, doubts. To shrink is to get smaller: sweaters in a hot wash, glaciers, markets. Both are irregular where it counts — grow, grew, grown; shrink, shrank, shrunk — and both work for numbers as happily as for living things.
Grow is one of English's oldest verbs, kin to green and grass, and it keeps that sense of living increase from within. Shrink is its everyday mirror: a drawing-in, a retreat from space once filled. What makes the pair worth a page rather than a shrug is grammar: both conjugate irregularly, both work transitively and intransitively in modern English (a firm grows its revenue; the wash shrank the sweater), and both anchor the trend language every chart description needs — grew steadily, shrank sharply.
grow
To grow is the most general word for getting bigger — the one you reach for when nothing more specific is needed. A child grows, a plant grows, a company grows, a doubt grows. It is an old Germanic word tied to green and grass, and it carries their sense of living increase: gradual, natural, from the inside. Note the irregular past — grow, grew, grown — and that it works both ways: things grow on their own, and a farmer grows crops. To expand or enlarge is sharper; to grow is the plain, living baseline.
shrink
To shrink is to grow smaller — to contract in size, amount, or extent. Wool shrinks in hot water; a glacier shrinks as it melts; a market shrinks when buyers vanish. The word carries a second, bodily sense too: to shrink back is to flinch and recoil, pulling inward away from something feared. Both meanings share one motion — a drawing-in, a retreat from the space once filled. What shrinks does not merely lessen; it withdraws, leaving the outline of what it used to be.
| grow | shrink | |
|---|---|---|
| Meaning | get bigger, naturally, from inside | get smaller; draw in |
| Forms | grow, grew, grown | shrink, shrank, shrunk(en) |
| Both ways | a firm grows its revenue | the wash shrank the sweater |
| Trend use | grew steadily / sharply | shrank by 10% |
| Second sense | grow up (mature); grow on someone | shrink from (recoil in fear) |
| Family | growth | shrinkage |
The seed and the sweater. Grow is the green thread climbing out of the soil — increase that comes from inside the thing, unhurried and alive, which is why the word suits children and doubts as well as economies. Shrink is the sweater pulling deep inside the chalk ghost of its former self — the same thing, less room. Between them they cover every chart that ever went up or down; the marks are won on their pasts: it has grown (never 'has grew'), it shrank (careful writing keeps shrunk for the participle).
grow
- iThe seedlings grew a hand's width in a single week.
- iiOnline sales have grown to a third of the firm's revenue.
- iiiDoubts about the schedule grew as the deadline approached.
shrink
- iWash it cold unless you want it to shrink.
- iiThe workforce shrank from 1,200 to 800 in two years.
- iiiTheir lead shrank to a single point by the final quarter.
The pasts are the tested part. Grow: grew (simple past), grown (participle) — 'has grew' is a hard error. Shrink: shrank (simple past), shrunk (participle), shrunken (adjective) — informal English says 'the market shrunk', careful writing keeps shrank. Watch the phrasal senses drifting away from size: grow up means to mature, grow on someone means to become liked, shrink from means to recoil. The gradual, leak-away kind of getting smaller belongs to dwindle, whose page against shrink is on this site.
Task 1's baseline trend pair: grew steadily, shrank sharply, has grown / has shrunk — with the irregular forms themselves the marked errors ('has grew', 'shrinked'). Grow also works transitively in business English (grow the economy, grow revenue), a usage now standard. When the fall is long, gradual, and toward nothing, dwindled outranks shrank — that nuance has its own page on this site.