The past tense is a verb tense expressing action, activity, state or being in the past. It has been suggested that Verbal agreement be merged into this article or section. ... Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by a sentence occurs. ...

In English, there are two distinct types of past tense:

1. Present perfect (see perfect tense)
2. Preterite (or simple past)

Each of these may also be found in the progressive (continuous) aspect. The perfect tenses are verb tenses showing actions completed at or before a specific time. ... The preterite (also praeterite, in American English also preterit, or past historic) is the grammatical tense expressing actions which took place in the past. ... The progressive or continuous tenses of a verb are those denoting an incomplete action in progress at a specific time. ...

Simple past is formed for regular verbs by adding –ed to the root of a word. Example: He walked to the store. A negation is produced by adding did not and the verb in its infinitive form. Example: He did not walk to the store. Question sentences are started with did as in Did he walk to the store? A regular verb is a verb whose conjugation can be predicted given a few verb forms (principal parts) and a few rules. ...

Simple past is used for describing acts that have already been concluded and whose exact time of occurrence is known. Furthermore, simple past is used for retelling successive events. That is why it is commonly used in storytelling.

Past progressive is formed by using the adequate form of to be and the verb’s present participle: He was going to church. By inserting not before the main verb a negation is achieved. Example: He was not going to church. A question is formed by prefixing the adequate form of to be as in Was he going?.

Past progressive is used for describing events that were just about to occur when a new event happened. The already occurring event is presented in past progressive, the new one in simple past. Example: We were sitting in the garden when the thunderstorm started. Use is similar to other languages' imperfect tense. The imperfect tense, in the classical grammar of several Indo-European languages, denotes a past tense with an imperfective aspect. ...

Present perfect simple is formed by combining have/has with the main verb’s past participle form: I have arrived. A negation is produced by inserting not after have/has: I have not arrived. Questions in present perfect are formulated by starting a sentence with have/has: Has she arrived?

Present perfect simple is used for describing a past action’s effect on the present: He has arrived. Now he’s here. This holds true for events that have just been secluded as well as for events that have not yet occurred.

Present perfect progressive is formed by prefixing have/has before the grammatical particle been and the verb’s present participle form: We have been waiting. A negation is expressed by including not between have/has and been: They have not been eating. As with present perfect simple, for forming a question, have/has is put at the beginning of a sentence: Have they been eating? In linguistics, the term particle is often employed as a useful catch-all lacking a strict definition. ...

Present perfect progressive is used for describing an event that has been going on until the present and may be continued in the future. It also puts emphasis on how an event has occurred. Very often since and for mark the use of present perfect progressive: I have been waiting for 5 hours / I have been waiting since 3 o’ clock.

Furthermore, there is another version of past tense possible: past perfect, similar to other languages' pluperfect tense. The pluperfect tense (from Latin: plus quam perfectum more than perfect) is a perfective tense that exists in most Indo-European languages, used to refer to an event that has completed before another past action. ...

Past perfect simple is formed by combining the simple past form of to have with the simple past form of the main verb: We had shouted. A negation is achieved by including not after had: You had not spoken. Questions in past perfect always start with had: Had he laughed?

Past perfect simple is used for describing secluded events that have occurred before something else followed. The event that is closer to the present is given in simple past tense: After we had visited our relatives in New York, we flew back to Toronto.

Past perfect progressive is formed by had, the grammatical particle been and the present participle of the main verb: You had been waiting. For negation, not is included before been: I had not been waiting. A question sentence is formed by starting with had: Had she been waiting? In linguistics, the term particle is often employed as a useful catch-all lacking a strict definition. ... In linguistics, a participle is an adjective derived from a verb. ...

If emphasis is put on the duration of a concluded action of the past, since and for are signal words for past perfect progressive: We had been waiting at the airport since the 9 p.m. flight. / They had been waiting for 3 hours now.

See also

• present tense
• future tense
• subjunctive mood