preterite
/ˈpɹɛtəɹɪt/
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.94 in modern English
11
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
1
Syllables
5
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Showing an action at a determined moment in the past.
noun
A grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past.
Example Sentences
- "The Dravidian preterite tense is ordinarily formed, like the present, by annexing the pronominal signs to the preterite verbal participle."
- "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, […]"
- "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."
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”)).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Inflected Forms
preterit (alternative)
praeterite (alternative)
præterite (alternative)
pret. (alternative)
preterites (plural)