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Dictionary

Words, grammatical forms and meanings linked to the ontology.

past historic tense en · NOUN

Pronunciation

  • (Southern-England) audio

Meanings

  1. A tense used in some languages (such as French and Italian) in narrative, and in spoken language primarily when reading narrative or in storytelling, for completed actions in the past or in speaking of the deceased.
    • Contrary to the frequently-heard contention that the past historic tense is used in writing but more rarely in spoken French, there are only nine instances of this tense, of which seven occur in the speech genres of FRNACO. 2016, Wendy J. Anderson, The Phraseology of Administrative French: A Corpus-based Study, BRILL, →ISBN, page 189:

Synonyms

preterite tense · past historic

Translations (9)

pt pretérito perfeito (tense) · fr passé simple (tense) · ja 単純過去 (tense) · ja 遠過去 (tense) · ru прошедшее историческое время (tense) · pl czas przeszły historyczny (tense) · it passato remoto (tense) · fi preteriti (tense) · es pretérito (tense)