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The simple past, past simple, or past indefinite, in English equivalent to the preterite, is the basic form of the past tense in Modern English. It is used principally to describe events in the past, although it also has some other uses. [ 1 ]
The passé simple (French pronunciation: [pase sɛ̃pl], simple past, preterite, or past historic), also called the passé défini (IPA: [pase defini], definite past), is the literary equivalent of the passé composé in the French language, used predominantly in formal writing (including history and literature) and formal speech.
The past progressive (past continuous) is formed using the simple past of be (was or were) with present participle (sometimes referred to as the -ing form) of the main verb: He was going. This form indicates that an action was ongoing at the past time under consideration, often interrupted by another past action (as in I was having a shower ...
This is followed by the simple past tense , and then the past participle. If there are irregular present tense forms (see below), these are given in parentheses after the infinitive. (The present participle and gerund forms of verbs, ending in -ing, are always regular. In English, these are used as verbs, adjectives, and nouns.)
The past tense and past participle are identical; they are formed with the ending -ed, which as in the previous case has three different pronunciations (/t/, /d/, /ɪd/). Certain spelling rules apply, including the doubling of consonants before the ending in forms like conned and preferred.
The simple past or past simple, sometimes also called the preterite, consists of the bare past tense of the verb (ending in -ed for regular verbs, and formed in various ways for irregular ones, with the following spelling rules for regular verbs: verbs ending in -e add only –d to the end (e.g. live – lived, not *liveed), verbs ending in -y ...
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In some verbs, the past tense, past participle, or both are identical in form to the basic (infinitive) form of the verb. This is the case with certain strong verbs, where historical sound changes have led to a leveling of the vowel modifications: for example, let has both past tense and past participle identical to the infinitive, while come ...