Word.ws English Dictionary

third conditional

third conditional noun: a structure used to convey unreal or unfulfilled events in the past, containing an if clause (with a verb in the past perfect) and a main clause (with would + the bare perfect infinitive of a verb).

Noun

third conditional (plural third conditionals)

  1. A structure used to convey unreal or unfulfilled events in the past, containing an if clause (with a verb in the past perfect) and a main clause (with would + the bare perfect infinitive of a verb).
    • "If Columbus hadn't discovered America, he wouldn't have been famous" is an example of the third conditional.

Forms of third conditional

pluralthird conditionals

Questions about third conditional

What does third conditional mean?
Third conditional means a structure used to convey unreal or unfulfilled events in the past, containing an if clause (with a verb in the past perfect) and a main clause (with would + the bare perfect infinitive of a verb).
What part of speech is third conditional?
Third conditional is a noun.
What is the plural of third conditional?
The plural of third conditional is third conditionals.

Words near third conditional in the dictionary

  1. third camp
  2. third camps
  3. third class
  4. third classes
  5. Third Coast
  6. third conditional
  7. third conditionals
  8. third contact
  9. third contacts
  10. third cosmic velocities
  11. third cosmic velocity

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: third conditional (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:

Cite this entry: “third conditional.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/third_conditional. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.