past tense
past tense noun: a grammatical form (often a verb form) that refers to an event, transaction, occurrence, or object that happened (or had happened), or existed, at some time before now (the applicable reference time).
Noun
past tense (plural past tenses)
- A grammatical form (often a verb form) that refers to an event, transaction, occurrence, or object that happened (or had happened), or existed, at some time before now (the applicable reference time).
- This is a report on a study of the use of the past tense forms in the 53 Japanese samples compiled for the Louvain International Database of Spoken English Interlanguage (LINDSEI) project.2004, Tomoko Koneko, “The Use of Past Tense Forms by Japanese Learners of English”, in Junsaku Nakamura, Nagayuki Inoue, Tomoji Tabata, editors, English Corpora under Japanese Eyes, Rodopi, page 215
- As you have studied Spanish, you have probably had the feeling that there are just too many past tenses.2009, Eric W. Vogt, Practice Makes Perfect: Spanish Past-Tense Verbs Up Close, McGraw Hill, page v
Verb
past tense (third-person singular simple present past tenses, present participle past tensing, simple past and past participle past tensed)
past tense meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu
past tense in Hindi
- grammatical form
- भूतकाल bhūtkāl, भूत काल bhūt kāl, माज़ी māzī
past tense in Tamil
- grammatical form
- இறந்தகாலம் iṟantakālam
past tense in Marathi
- past tense
- भूतकाळ bhūtkāḷ
past tense in Urdu
- grammatical form
- ماضی māzī, زَمانَۂ ماضی zamāna-yi māzī
More languagesFewer languages
- past tense in Bengali
- অতীত কাল otit kal
- past tense in Telugu
- భూతకాలము bhūtakālamu
- past tense in Malayalam
- ഭൂതകാലം bhūtakālaṁ
- past tense in Kannada
- ಹಿಂಬೊತ್ತು
- past tense in Punjabi
- ਭੂਤਕਾਲ bhūtkāl
- past tense in Gujarati
- ભૂતકાળ bhūtkāḷ
- past tense in Sinhala
- අයු කල් ayu kal
- past tense in Tagalog
- panahunang pangnagdaan, naganap
- past tense in Arabic
- مَاضٍ māḍin, الْمَاضِي al-māḍī, فِعْل مَاضٍ fiʕl māḍin, الْفِعْل الْمَاضِي al-fiʕl al-māḍī
- past tense in Malay
- masa lampau
- past tense in Indonesian
- kala lampau
- past tense in Thai
- อดีตกาล à-dìit-dtà-gaan
- past tense in Vietnamese
- thời quá khứ, thì quá khứ
Forms of past tense
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | past tenses |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | past tenses |
| present participle | past tensing |
| past participle | past tensed |
| past | past tensed |
Questions about past tense
- What does past tense mean?
- Past tense means a grammatical form (often a verb form) that refers to an event, transaction, occurrence, or object that happened (or had happened), or existed, at some time before now (the applicable reference time).
- What is past tense in Hindi?
- Past tense in Hindi is भूतकाल (bhūtkāl), भूत काल (bhūt kāl), माज़ी (māzī). See Past tense meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is past tense?
- Past tense can be a noun or a verb.
- What is the plural of past tense?
- The plural of past tense is past tenses.
Words near past tense in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: past tense (page history and authors); भूतकाळ (Marathi) (page history and authors); past tense (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਭੂਤਕਾਲ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); අයු කල් (Sinhala) (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 tense.wav.
Cite this entry: “past tense.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/past_tense. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.