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definitions

past perfect

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noun Grammar.

pluperfect.

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Nearby words

  1. past life therapy,
  2. past master,
  3. past mistress,
  4. past one's prime,
  5. past participle,
  6. past progressive,
  7. pasta,
  8. paste,
  9. paste mold,
  10. paste-on

Origin of past perfect

First recorded in 1885–90
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for past perfect

  • She is just past-perfect as a chaperone and she said that she thought a party of four girls would be ideal.

    Meg of Mystery Mountain|Grace May North
British Dictionary definitions for past perfect

past perfect

adjective

denoting a tense of verbs used in relating past events where the action had already occurred at the time of the action of a main verb that is itself in a past tense. In English this is a compound tense formed with had plus the past participle

noun

  1. the past perfect tense
  2. a verb in this tense
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