Word.ws English Dictionary

præterite

præterite is the obsolete form of preterite.

Meaning of preterite

Adjective

preterite (not comparable)

  1. Showing an action at a determined moment in the past.
    • The Dravidian preterite tense is ordinarily formed, like the present, by annexing the pronominal signs to the preterite verbal participle.1913 [1856], Robert Caldwell, edited by J.L. Wyatt and T. Ramakrishna Pillai, A Comparative Grammar of the Dravidian, or, South-Indian Family of Languages, 3rd edition, London: Kegan Paul, →OCLC...
  2. Belonging wholly to the past; passed by.
    • Without leaving your elbow-chair, you shall go back with me thirty years, which will bring you among things and persons as thoroughly preterite as Romulus or Numa.1890, James Russell Lowell, “Cambridge Thirty Years Ago”, in The Writings of James Russell Lowell, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, →OCLC, page 52
    Synonyms:
    bygone

See all 3 meanings of preterite

Questions about præterite

What is præterite the obsolete form of?
Præterite is the obsolete form of preterite.

Words near præterite in the dictionary

  1. prætenses
  2. prætension
  3. prætensions
  4. prætentious
  5. præter-
  6. præterite
  7. præterition
  8. præternatural
  9. prætexta
  10. prætor
  11. prætores

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: præterite (page history and authors); preterite (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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Cite this entry: “præterite.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pr%C3%A6terite. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.