Past Tense – Examples & Types

Tenses are one of the most important elements in English grammar. They help complete a sentence and add meaning to it by locating the time of the occurrence of an action.

There are mainly three broad tenses in English, namely past tense, present tense, and future tense. Each tense has its unique properties that communicate time in different contexts. In this post, we will discuss the first form of tense – Past tense. In simple words, past tense is a type that describes something that occurred in the past. It talks about something that has no present existence.

However, past tense can further be divided into four different types. Each of these communicates time in the past in different contexts. Let us get into a detailed discussion to know better.

What is the past tense?

The past tense is a grammatical verb tense that describes an activity that happened sometime in the past. That means it is a tense that is used to indicate past actions or state of being.

In simple language, the past tense is one of the main tenses in English that talks about actions that have no present relevance. These are actions that started and ended in the past. Something that already happened and is now history. For example;

• He played a lot today.
• I wrote all the notes.
• They booked their tickets for Delhi.
• I jumped into the pool.

Different types of past tense

Past tense can be categorized into four different forms that communicate past activities in different contexts. They are;

Simple past tense: The simple past tense is the first form of past tense. It simply talks about actions that occurred and also completed in the past.

Here, the root form of the main verb is used in its past particle form. This means regular verbs are added with –d and –ed, and irregular verbs take their own unique forms.

• He played the guitar.
• I ate a lot today.

Past continuous tense: This is a type of past tense that describes an action that was ongoing or progressive in the past. Something that happened and continued in the past.

Here, the auxiliary verb was is used with the main verb in its present participle form. That means the root form is added with –ing. For example:

• I was writing my notes.
• They were playing cards.

Past perfect tense: This is a form of past tense that emphasizes the fact that an activity took place and was completed before another action in the past.

Here, we simply use the auxiliary verb had along with the past participle form of the main verb.

• She had gone to study.
• I had written all the notes before the test.

Past perfect continuous tense: This is the final form of the past tense. It describes an action that took place in the past and continued till another point in the past.

Here, the auxiliary verbs had been is used along with the present participle form of the main verb. That means the root form of the main verb is added with -ing. For example:

• He had been working at the office.
• They had been playing before the teacher entered.

So, these are the basic and important points concerning the past tense. While different aspects are used in different contexts, their primary aim is to talk about historic events.