Definition:
A verb tense (or form--see Rissanen's note below) indicating action that has not yet begun. The simple future is usually formed by adding the auxiliary will or shall to the base form of a verb. See also:
Examples and Observations:
- "Never believe any war will be smooth and easy."
(Winston Churchill) - "Nothing will work unless you do."
(Maya Angelou) - Scully: Homer, we're going to ask you a few simple yes or no questions. Do you understand?
Homer: Yes. (Lie detector blows up.)
(The Simpsons) - "[T]he future tense has a different status from the other tenses. Rather than being a form of the verb, it is expressed by the modal auxiliary will. It's no accident that the future shares its syntax with words for necessity (must), possibility (can, may, might), and moral obligation (should, ought to), because what will happen is conceptually related to what must happen, what can happen, what should happen, and what we intend to happen. The word will itself is ambiguous between future tense and an expression of determination (as in Sharks or no sharks, I will swim to Alcatraz), and its homonyms show up in free will, strong-willed, and to will something to happen. The same ambiguity between the future and the intended can be found in another marker for the future tense, going to or gonna. It's as if the language is affirming the ethos that people have the power to make their own futures."
(Steven Pinker, The Stuff of Thought. Viking, 2007) - "Many recent grammarians do not accept 'future' as a tense because it is expressed periphrastically with auxiliaries and because its meaning is partly modal."
(Matti Rissanen, "Syntax," Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. 3, ed. by Roger Lass. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000)
