pluperfect

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Of all the vain wishes, the retroactive pluperfect are the vainest, and an antenatal wish is sublimely ridiculous.

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Definitions (10)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (4)

  1. adjective Of or being a verb tense used to express action completed before a specified or implied past time.
  2. adjective More than perfect; supremely accomplished; ideal: "He has won a reputation as [a] pluperfect bureaucrat” (New York Times).
  3. noun The pluperfect tense, formed in English with the past participle of a verb and the auxiliary had, as had learned in the sentence He had learned to type by the end of the semester. Also called past perfect.

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Examples (50)

  • I think it a cowardly way to deal with a little boy in so cruel a manner, and to send him home with his back and fingers tingling and sometimes bleeding, because he cannot learn so quickly as his fellows On one occasion Knight got out of temper with my stupidity or dulness in not comprehending something about 'a preter-pluperfect tense,' or some mystery of that sort. —  James Nasmyth: Engineer, An Autobiography.
  • The pluperfect -- as those you who who suffered through 8th grade Latin with me know well —  Buttermilk & Molasses
  • In particular, it uses the future subjunctive, the personal infinitive, and the synthetic pluperfect (see the section on the grammar of Portuguese, below). —  Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en]
  • People with a limited knowledge of a strange language do not say what they wish_, but what they can_; and there is no name for the helplessness of him who is tied up in his preter-pluperfect tense. —  Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General
  • The wording of the law thus left it open to plead that it applied only to such act as occurred after its enactment, for the pluperfect necavisset in the dependent clause answers to the future perfect in a direct one. —  The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order
 

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Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English pluperfyth, alteration of Latin plūs quam perfectum, more than perfect : plūs, more; see pelə-1 in Indo-European roots + quam, than + perfectum, neuter past participle of perficere, to complete; see perfect.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Abbr. of L. (New Latin) plusquam-perfectum (sc. tempus), the pluperfect tense, literally ‘more than perfect’: L. plus, more (see plus); quam, than; perfectum, neuter of perfectus, perfect: see perfect.
 

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/ˈplupərfɛkt/
by American Heritage

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