past progressive tense

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

   Broaderprogressive

Questions about past progressive tense

What does past progressive tense mean?

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

What is another word for past progressive tense?

Close synonyms include past progressive. 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 tense a common word?

past progressive 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.