tense
/tɛns/
tense noun: the property of indicating the point in time at which an action or state of being occurs or exists.
Noun
tense (plural tenses)
- The property of indicating the point in time at which an action or state of being occurs or exists.
- Dyirbal verbs are not inflected for tense.
- An inflected form of a verb that indicates tense.
- English only has a past tense and a non-past tense; it has no future tense.
- In ſo moche that if any verbe be of the thyꝛde coniugation
I ſet out all his rotes and tenſes[…]1530 July 18, Iohan Palſgrave, “The Introduction”, in Leſclarciſſement de la langue francoyſe […] , London: Richard Pynſon, Iohan Haukyns, →OCLC, page 32; reprinted as Lesclarcissement de la langue...
- A grammatical aspect.
- A verb form or construction indicating a combination of tense, aspect, and mood.
- The "simple present" tense in English can have several meanings.
- The Spanish teacher told the student to use the imperfect tense instead of the preterite tense.
Verb (1)
tense (third-person singular simple present tenses, present participle tensing, simple past and past participle tensed)
- To apply a tense to.
- tensing a verb
Adjective
tense (comparative tenser, superlative tensest)
- Showing signs of stress or strain; not relaxed.
- You need to relax, all this overtime and stress is making you tense.
- "Attention," the tense man called out in Greek. "This is Lieutenant Kazamakis of the Cypriot Provisional Guard. You will immediately surrender all weapons and slowly come down the stairs, hands above your head." No answer.2009 October 21, Richard Steinberg, The 4 Phase Man: A Novel, Bantam, →ISBN
- Characterized by strain (on the nerves, emotions, etc). (Compare charged.)
- Chi stops, but her eyes continue to pierce right through me and into Karima. A tense moment later, she drops her eyes back to the terminal and scans the data once more. The showdown is over, at least for the moment.2022 June 16, Marc B. DeGeorge, A Call to the Sky, MuseMarc Studio LLC, →ISBN
- Pulled taut, without any slack.
- Produced with relative constriction of the vocal tract.
Verb (2)
tense (third-person singular simple present tenses, present participle tensing, simple past and past participle tensed)
- To make tense.
- To become tense.
- The driver and the man shouted angrily at each other and I tensed, ready for violence. But soon everyone in the tap-tap joined in, capping remarks, joking, telling chicken and goat stories.1983 December 24, Andrea Loewenstein, “"What's Freedom Without Food In Your Stomach?" — A Trip to Haiti”, in Gay Community News, volume 11, number 23, page 8
tense meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
tense in Hindi
- verb forms distinguishing time
- काल kāl
tense in Tamil
- verb forms distinguishing time
- காலம் kālam
tense in Urdu
- tense
- زمانہ zamāna
tense in Bengali
- tense
- কাল kal
More languagesFewer languages
- tense in Telugu
- కాలము kālamu
- tense in Malayalam
- കാലം kālaṁ
- tense in Kannada
- ಹೊತ್ತಿನ ಪತ್ತುಗೆ, ಪೊತ್ತು, ಗಟ್ಟಿಮಾಡು, ಬಿಗಿ ಮಾಡಿಕೊ
- tense in Punjabi
- ਕਾਲ kāl
- tense in Gujarati
- તંગ
- tense in Assamese
- কাল kal
- tense in Tagalog
- panahunan
- tense in Arabic
- صِيغَة ṣīḡa, صِيغَةُ الْفِعْل ṣīḡatu l-fiʕl, زَمَن zaman, مُتَوَتِّر mutawattir
- tense in Persian
- زمان zamân
- tense in Thai
- กาล gaan
- tense in Vietnamese
- thì
Examples of tense in a sentence
- "To buy" is an irregular English verb: its past simple and past participle tense is "bought".
- "Walked" is the past tense of the regular verb "to walk".
- Spanish verb forms have different endings depending on the tense, mood and person.
Synonyms of tense
Forms of tense
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | tenses |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | tenses |
| present participle | tensing |
| past participle | tensed |
| past | tensed |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | tenser |
| superlative | tensest |
Origin of tense
From Middle English tens, from Old French tens (modern French temps), from Latin tempus. Doublet of tempo and tempus.
Borrowed from Latin tēnsus, one form of the past participle of tendō (“stretch”).
Words formed from tense
- absolute tense
- aorist tense
- compound tense
- conditional tense
- continuous tense
- future tense
- hodiernal tense
- imperfect tense
- past historic tense
- past imperfect tense
- past tense
- perfect tense
- pluperfect tense
- present tense
- preterite tense
- primary tense
- progressive tense
- relative tense
- secondary tense
- simple tense
- supine tense
- tensal
- tense harmony
- tenseless
- hypertense
- tensely
- tensen
- tenseness
- tense vowel
- tensible
- tensification
- tensor
- ultratense
- overtense
- untense
- tense up
Phrases with tense
Words that rhyme with tense
Questions about tense
- What does tense mean?
- Tense means the property of indicating the point in time at which an action or state of being occurs or exists.
- What is tense in Hindi?
- Tense in Hindi is काल (kāl). See Tense meaning in Hindi.
- What part of speech is tense?
- Tense can be a noun, a verb or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce tense?
- Tense is pronounced /tɛns/.
- What is the plural of tense?
- The plural of tense is tenses.
Words near tense in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: tense (page history and authors); زمانہ (Urdu) (page history and authors); কাল (Bengali) (page history and authors); tense (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ਕਾਲ (Punjabi) (page history and authors); tense (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); কাল (Assamese) (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-tense.ogg.
Cite this entry: “tense.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tense. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.