preterite
noun
No English definition recorded for this entry.
L325899 on Wikidata ↗Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈpɹɛtəɹɪt/ / /ˈpɹɛtəɹət/
adj
Etymology: From Middle English preterit, from Old French preterit (13th century), from Latin praeteritum (as in tempus praeteritum (“time past”)), the past participle of praetereō (“to go by, go past”), itself from praeter (“beyond, before, above, more than”) (comparative of prae (“before”)) + itum (the past participle of eō (“to go”)).
- 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.”
- 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.”
“Boas, Benedict, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, Murdock, Evans-Pritchard, Griaule, Levi-Strauss, to keep the list short, preterite, and variegated, […]”
noun
Etymology: From Middle English preterit, from Old French preterit (13th century), from Latin praeteritum (as in tempus praeteritum (“time past”)), the past participle of praetereō (“to go by, go past”), itself from praeter (“beyond, before, above, more than”) (comparative of prae (“before”)) + itum (the past participle of eō (“to go”)).
- 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.”
“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.”