conditional tense

English

Noun

conditional tense (plural conditional tenses)

1. The conditional mood.
   • 2019, Maaza Mengiste

, The Shadow King, Canongate Books (2020), page 341:

But he is stopped short by vocabulary, by the conditional tense, by that way of speaking that shifts everything into the hypothetical, into an imagined existence that could or could not be true.

Translations

conditional mood — see also conditional

• French: temps conditionnel m
• Icelandic: skildagatíð f