preterite
Britishnoun
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a tense of verbs used to relate past action, formed in English by inflection of the verb, as jumped, swam
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a verb in this tense
adjective
Etymology
Origin of preterite
C14: from Late Latin praeteritum ( tempus ) past (time, tense), from Latin praeterīre to go by, from preter- + īre to go
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.
But if he says, “I shooted you,” you're only doing him a favor by improving his form: “The correct preterite is ‘shot’.”
From Slate ● Aug. 20, 2014
And what are we preterite souls left to do but open our browsers each morning with that sickly tinge of disaster anticipation we've become habituated to since Sept.
From Salon ● Aug. 10, 2011
What does a writer do when he has already won the Man Booker Prize and can make copacetic use of words like preterite, spalpeen, goitrous and phthistic?
From New York Times ● Apr. 4, 2010
The exception alluded to may be a method of forming the preterite tense, which seems to be shared by a great number of widely-spread Bantu languages.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 "Banks" to "Bassoon" by Various
Those having a mutated vowel in the present have the corresponding unmutated vowel in the preterite.
From A Middle High German Primer Third Edition by Wright, Joseph
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
