preterite
English
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Alternative forms
edit- preterit (US)
- praeterite
- præterite (archaic)
- (abbreviation, grammar): pret.
Etymology
editFrom Middle English preterit, from Old French preterit (13th century), from Latin praeteritum (as in tempus praeteritum (“time past”)), the past participle of praetereō (“I go by, go past”), itself from praeter (“beyond, before, above, more than”) (comparative of prae (“before”)) + itum (the past participle of eō (“I go”)).
Pronunciation
edit- IPA(key): /ˈpɹɛtəɹɪt/, (weak vowel merger) /ˈpɹɛtəɹət/
Adjective
editpreterite (not comparable)
- (grammar, of a tense) Showing an action at a determined moment in the past.
- 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, page 496:
- The Dravidian preterite tense is ordinarily formed, like the present, by annexing the pronominal signs to the preterite verbal participle.
- Belonging wholly to the past; passed by.
- 1890, James Russell Lowell, “Cambridge Thirty Years Ago”, in The Writings of James Russell Lowell, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, →OCLC, page 52:
- 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.
- 1988, Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author, page 19:
- Boas, Benedict, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, Murdock, Evans-Pritchard, Griaule, Levi-Strauss, to keep the list short, preterite, and variegated, […]
Synonyms
edit- (belonging wholly to the past): bygone, foregone; see also Thesaurus:past
Translations
editshowing an action at a determined moment in the past
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Noun
editpreterite (plural preterites)
- (grammar) A grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past.
- 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:
- 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.
- 1994, Dieter Stein, Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Towards a Standard English: 1600-1800, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 115:
- Nevertheless, a small amount of variation still exists in one area of standard English verbal morphology: the preterite and past participle forms of certain irregular verbs.
Related terms
editTranslations
editpreterite tense; simple past
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Translations to be checked
Anagrams
editSpanish
editVerb
editpreterite
- second-person singular voseo imperative of preterir combined with te
Categories:
- English terms derived from Proto-Indo-European
- English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *h₁ey-
- English terms inherited from Middle English
- English terms derived from Middle English
- English terms derived from Old French
- English terms derived from Latin
- English 3-syllable words
- English terms with IPA pronunciation
- English lemmas
- English adjectives
- English uncomparable adjectives
- en:Grammar
- English terms with quotations
- English nouns
- English countable nouns
- en:Tenses
- Spanish non-lemma forms
- Spanish verb forms