Word.ws English Dictionary

past anterior

past anterior noun: a compound tense used in literary French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, in function a pluperfect, and in form composed of the conjunction of the simple past tense of an auxiliary verb (avoir, être) with the past participle. Example: Après que la femme et l'homme l'eurent remercié = After the woman and the man had thanked him.

Noun

past anterior (uncountable)

  1. A compound tense used in literary French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, in function a pluperfect, and in form composed of the conjunction of the simple past tense of an auxiliary verb (avoir, être) with the past participle. Example: Après que la femme et l'homme l'eurent remercié = After the woman and the man had thanked him
    Synonyms:
    past perfect

Synonyms of past anterior

Questions about past anterior

What does past anterior mean?
Past anterior means a compound tense used in literary French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian, in function a pluperfect, and in form composed of the conjunction of the simple past tense of an auxiliary verb (avoir, être) with the past participle. Example: Après que la femme et l'homme l'eurent remercié = After the woman and the man had thanked him.
What part of speech is past anterior?
Past anterior is a noun.

Words near past anterior in the dictionary

  1. passéists
  2. passés
  3. past
  4. past active participle
  5. past active participles
  6. past anterior
  7. past continuous
  8. past due
  9. past exonerative
  10. past historic
  11. past historic tense

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: past anterior (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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