Word.ws English Dictionary

preterites

preterites is the plural of preterite.

Meaning of preterite

Noun

preterite (plural preterites)

  1. A grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past.
    • When simple verbs redouble the preterite, the compounds drop the first syllable, as: Pello, pĕpŭli, to drive away, to beat back; Repello, rĕpŭli, and not rĕpĕpŭli, to drive back, to repel.1772, John Mair, A Radical Vocabulary, Latin and English, Edinburgh: A. Murray, and J. Cochran, for A. Kincaid & W. Creech, and J. Bell, →OCLC, page 101
    Synonyms:
    grammatical tense

See all 3 meanings of preterite

Questions about preterites

What is preterites the plural of?
Preterites is the plural of preterite.

Words near preterites in the dictionary

  1. preterite-present
  2. preterite-present verb
  3. preterite-present verbs
  4. preterite-presents
  5. preteriteness
  6. preterites
  7. preterition
  8. preteritions
  9. preteritive
  10. preteritness
  11. preterits

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: preterites (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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