past historic tense

English

Noun

past historic tense

1. (grammar) A tense used in some languages (such as French and Italian) in narrative, and in spoken language primarily when reading narrative or in storytelling, for completed actions in the past or in speaking of the deceased.

   Synonyms: past historic, (loosely) preterite tense

   • 2016, Wendy J. Anderson, The Phraseology of Administrative French: A Corpus-based Study, BRILL, →ISBN, page 189:

     Contrary to the frequently-heard contention that the past historic tense is used in writing but more rarely in spoken French, there are only nine instances of this tense, of which seven occur in the speech genres of FRNACO.

Translations

tense

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: please add this translation if you can

• Finnish: preteriti (fi)
• French: passé simple (fr) m
• Italian: passato remoto (it) m
• Japanese: 単純過去 (tanjun-kako) (for French), 遠過去 (en-kako) (for Italian)
• Portuguese: pretérito perfeito (pt)
• Russian: прошедшее историческое время n (prošedšeje istoričeskoje vremja)
• Spanish: pretérito (es)