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The imperfect (abbreviated IMPERF) is a verb form that combines past tense (reference to a past time) and imperfective aspect (reference to a continuing or repeated event or state). It can have meanings similar to the English "was walking" or "used to walk".
The imperfective aspect may be fused with the past tense, for a form traditionally called the imperfect. In some cases, such as Spanish and Portuguese , this is because the imperfective aspect occurs only in the past tense; others, such as Georgian and Bulgarian , have both general imperfectives and imperfects.
The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs sang , went and washed . Most languages have a past tense, with some having several types in order to indicate how far back the action took place.
Imperfect tense verbs represent a past process combined with so called imperfective aspect, that is, they often stand for an ongoing past action or state at a past point in time (see secondary present) or represent habitual actions (see Latin tenses with modality) (e.g. 'he was eating', 'he used to eat'). The perfect tense combines the meanings ...
It semantically corresponds to the distinction between the morphological forms known respectively as the aorist and imperfect in Greek, the preterite and imperfect in Spanish, the simple past (passé simple) and imperfect in French, and the perfect and imperfect in Latin (from the Latin perfectus, meaning "completed").
The imperfect tense (Greek παρατατικός (paratatikós) "for prolonging", from παρατείνω (parateínō) "prolong") is used in the indicative mood only. It often indicates a continuing situation in the past, rather than an event.
The present tense can replace not only the perfect tense, but also sometimes the imperfect tense: [40] tōtīs trepidātur castrīs (Caesar) [41] 'in the whole camp there is panic' (i.e. people were panicking) After dum 'while', in a past context, the present indicative regularly has the meaning of an imperfect tense: [42]
The aorist indicative [40] (also the imperfect, or past iterative in Herodotus) with ἄν án may express repeated or customary past action. This is called the iterative indicative. It is similar to the past potential, since it denotes what could have happened at a given point, but unlike the past potential, it is a statement of fact. [41] [42 ...