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sequence of tenses

British

noun

grammar the sequence according to which the tense of a subordinate verb in a sentence is determined by the tense of the principal verb, as in I believe he is lying, I believed he was lying, etc

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Ever the English professor, he was careful about the sequence of tenses.

From New York Times • Jul. 22, 2013

Resnais, a past master of cinematic sleight of hand, has often taken a story and stylized it, juxtaposed images, shuffled the sequence of tenses.

From Time Magazine Archive

A writer also has to harmonize the tenses according to a scheme called sequence of tenses, tense agreement, or backshift.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

We now see that the past tense has a third meaning in English: a backshifted event in a sequence of tenses.

From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker

The Protasis takes those tenses of the Subjunctive demanded by the sequence of tenses.

From New Latin Grammar by Bennett, Charles E. (Charles Edwin)

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023