past perfect tense

1. 1.

   a perfective tense used to express action completed in the past

   “`I had finished' is an example of the past perfect”

   Synonymspast perfectpluperfectpluperfect tense

   Broaderperfective

Questions about past perfect tense

What does past perfect tense mean?

past perfect tense means "a perfective tense used to express action completed in the past".

What is another word for past perfect tense?

Close synonyms include past perfect, pluperfect, pluperfect tense. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is past perfect tense a common word?

past perfect tense is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.