past historic tense
past historic tense noun: a tense used in some languages (such as French and Italian) in narrative, and in spoken language primarily when reading narrative or in storytelling, for completed actions in the past or in speaking of the deceased.
Noun
past historic tense
- A tense used in some languages (such as French and Italian) in narrative, and in spoken language primarily when reading narrative or in storytelling, for completed actions in the past or in speaking of the deceased.
- Contrary to the frequently-heard contention that the past historic tense is used in writing but more rarely in spoken French, there are only nine instances of this tense, of which seven occur in the speech genres of FRNACO.2016, Wendy J. Anderson, The Phraseology of Administrative French: A Corpus-based Study, BRILL, →ISBN, page 189
- Synonyms:
- past historic, preterite tense
Synonyms of past historic tense
Questions about past historic tense
- What does past historic tense mean?
- Past historic tense means a tense used in some languages (such as French and Italian) in narrative, and in spoken language primarily when reading narrative or in storytelling, for completed actions in the past or in speaking of the deceased.
- What part of speech is past historic tense?
- Past historic tense is a noun.
Words near past historic tense in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: past historic tense (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-past historic tense.wav.
Cite this entry: “past historic tense.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past_historic_tense. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.