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Webster 1913 Edition

Preterit

Pret′er-it

(?; 277)
,
Adj.
[L.
praeteritus
, p. p. of
praeterire
to go or pass by;
praeter
beyond, by +
ire
to go: cf. F.
prétérit
. See
Issue
.]
[Written also
preterite
and
præterite
.]
1.
(Gram.)
Past; – applied to a tense which expresses an action or state as past.
2.
Belonging wholly to the past; passed by.
[R.]
Things and persons as thoroughly
preterite
as Romulus or Numa.
Lowell.

Pret′er-it

,
Noun.
(Gram.)
The preterit; also, a word in the preterit tense.

Webster 1828 Edition

Preterit

PRE'TERIT

,
Adj.
[L. proeteritus, proetereo; proeter, beyond, and eo, to go.] Past; applied to the tense in grammar which expresses an action or being perfectly past or finished, often that which is just past or completed, but without a specification of time. It is called also the perfect tense; as, scripsi, I have written. We say, 'I have written a letter to my correspondent;' in which sentence, the time is supposed to be not distant and not specified. But when the time is mentioned,we use the imperfect tense so called; as, 'I wrote to my correspondent yesterday.' In this use of the preterit or perfect tense, the English differs from the French, in which j'ai ecrit heir, is correct; but I have written yesterday, would be very bad English.

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