tense

The time of a verb's action or state of being, such as past, present, and future. See also:

• Present Tense
• Past Tense
• Forming the Past Tense of Regular Verbs
• Future Tense
• Future Perfect
• Progressive
• Present Progressive
• Present Perfect
• Past Perfect

Etymology:

Observations:

• "How many tenses are there in English? If your automatic reaction is to say 'three, at least'--past, present, and future--you are showing the influence of the Latinate grammatical tradition. If you go for a larger number, adding such labels as perfect and pluperfect, this tradition is even more deep-rooted within you. . . .
  
  "English . . . has only one inflectional form to express time: the past tense marker (typically -ed), as in walked, jumped, and saw. There is therefore a two-way tense contrast in English: I walk vs. I walked--present tense vs past tense. English has no future tense ending, but uses a wide range of other techniques to express future time (such as will/shall, be going to, be about to, and future adverbs). The linguistic facts are uncontroversial. However, people find it extremely difficult to drop the notion of 'future tense' (and related notions, such as imperfect, future perfect, and pluperfect tenses) from their mental vocabulary, and to look for other ways of talking about the grammatical realities of the English verb."
  (David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press, 2003)



• "It is well known that the tense systems of French, English and German teem with logical inconsistencies as they are actually used."
  (Edward Sapir)



• "Pardon me, I was using the subjunctive instead of the past tense. Yes, we’re away past tents. We’re living in bungalows now."
  (Groucho Marx as Captain Spaulding in Animal Crackers)