(grammar) any of the forms of a verb that may be used to show the time of the action or state expressed by the verb the past/present/future tense Wordfindergrammarcase, conjugate, gender, grammar, inflect, noun, part of speech, singular, subject, tense Oxford Collocations Dictionary adjectivefuture, past, present, … verb + tenseuse, form tense + nounmarker prepositionin the… tense See full entry See related entries: Grammar Word Originnoun Middle English (in the general sense ‘time’): from Old French tens, from Latin tempus ‘time’.Extra examples ‘Have’ is the auxiliary verb used to form perfect tenses. In the sentence ‘I fed the cat’, ‘fed’ is in the past tense. The ‘-ed’ ending is used to form the past tense of regular verbs. the present simple tense the present tense marker ‘s’
Check pronunciation: tense
