past progressive

1. 1.

   a progressive tense used to describe on-going action in the past

   “`I had been running' is an example of the past progressive”

   Synonymspast progressive tense

   Broaderprogressive

Questions about past progressive

What does past progressive mean?

past progressive means "a progressive tense used to describe on-going action in the past".

What is another word for past progressive?

Close synonyms include past progressive 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 progressive a common word?

past progressive 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.