English-French translations for past tense

• imparfait
• passé
  Du temps s'est écoulé et il faut mettre la phrase au passé. Time has moved on, so it needs to be put in the past tense.
  Si je devais souligner un aspect du rapport de M. Dimitrakopoulos, ce serait le fait qu’il regarde vers l’avenir, le futur ne pouvant pas être construit en parlant uniquement au passé. If I had to emphasise one aspect of Mr Dimitrakopoulos’s report, it would be that it looks to the future, because the future cannot be built solely by talking in the past tense.

Definition of past tense

• A grammatical form that refers to an event, transaction, occurrence, or object that happened , or existed, at some time before now (the applicable reference time
• A grammatical form that is used in a conditional expression to refer to an event, transaction, occurrence, or object that is hypothetical and often counterfactual

Examples

• Example: "I saw the #5 bus across the street. I didn’t make it."
• Example: "If I spoke Japanese I would be happy to visit Japan."

Related words

• simple past tense
• past historic tense
• past imperfect tense