Meanings
- grammarA tense used in some languages (such as French and Italian) in narrative, and in spoken language primarily when reading narrative or in storytelling, for completed actions in the past or in speaking of the deceased.
Contrary to the frequently-heard contention that the past historic tense is used in writing but more rarely in spoken French, there are only nine instances of this tense, of which seven occur in the speech genres of FRNACO.
2016, Wendy J. Anderson, The Phraseology of Administrative French: A Corpus-based Study, BRILL, →ISBN, page 189Synonyms: past historic, preterite tense
Synonyms & antonyms
nounA tense used in some languages (such as French and Italian) in narrative, and in spoken language primarily when reading narrative or in storytelling, for completed actions in the past or in speaking of the deceased.
Translations
Finnish preteriti
- preterititense
French passé simple
- passé simpletense
Italian passato remoto
- passato remototense
Japanese 単純過去, 遠過去
- 単純過去 (tanjun-kako)tense
- 遠過去 (en-kako)tense
Polish czas przeszły historyczny
- czas przeszły historycznytense
Portuguese pretérito perfeito
- pretérito perfeitotense
Russian прошедшее историческое время
- прошедшее историческое время (prošedšeje istoričeskoje vremja)tense
Spanish pretérito
- pretéritotense
Cite this entry
past historic tense. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/past%20historic%20tense
“past historic tense.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/past%20historic%20tense. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “past historic tense,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/past%20historic%20tense.
Source: past historic tense on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.