tense.
The property of indicating the point in time at which an action or state of being occurs or exists.
Meaning & usage
The property of indicating the point in time at which an action or state of being occurs or exists.
Dyirbal verbs are not inflected for tense.
An inflected form of a verb that indicates tense.
English only has a past tense and a non-past tense; it has no future tense.
A grammatical aspect.
A verb form or construction indicating a combination of tense, aspect, and mood.
The "simple present" tense in English can have several meanings.
The Spanish teacher told the student to use the imperfect tense instead of the preterite tense.
Where this word comes from
From Middle English tens, from Old French tens (modern French temps), from Latin tempus. Doublet of tempo and tempus.
To apply a tense to.
tensing a verb
Where this word comes from
From Middle English tens, from Old French tens (modern French temps), from Latin tempus. Doublet of tempo and tempus.
Showing signs of stress or strain; not relaxed.
You need to relax, all this overtime and stress is making you tense.
Characterized by strain (on the nerves, emotions, etc). (Compare charged.)
Pulled taut, without any slack.
Produced with relative constriction of the vocal tract.
Where this word comes from
Borrowed from Latin tēnsus, one form of the past participle of tendō (“stretch”).
To make tense.
To become tense.
Where this word comes from
Borrowed from Latin tēnsus, one form of the past participle of tendō (“stretch”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.