Past Perfect
The Past Perfect tense is quite an easy tense to understand and to use. This tense talks about the “past in the past”.
In this lesson we look at the structure and use of the Past Perfect tense, followed by a quiz to check your understanding.
How do we make the Past Perfect tense?
The structure of the Past Perfect tense is:
| subject | + | auxiliary have | + | main verb |
| conjugated in Past Simple | ||||
| had | past participle |
The auxiliary verb (have) is conjugated in the Past Simple: had
The main verb is invariable in past participle form: -ed (or irregular)
For negative sentences we insert not between the auxiliary verb and the main verb.
For question sentences, we exchange the subject and the auxiliary verb.
Look at these example sentences with the Past Perfect tense:
| subject | auxiliary verb | main verb | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| + | I | had | finished | my work. | |
| + | You | had | stopped | before me. | |
| – | She | had | not | gone | to school. |
| – | We | had | not | left. | |
| ? | Had | you | arrived? | ||
| ? | Had | they | eaten | dinner? |
Contraction with Past Perfect
When we use the Past Perfect in speaking, we often contract the subject and the auxiliary verb. We also sometimes do this in informal writing:
| I had | I’d |
| you had | you’d |
| he had she had it had |
he’d she’d it’d |
| we had | we’d |
| they had | they’d |
- I’d eaten already.
- They’d gone home.
In negative sentences, we may contract the auxiliary verb and “not”:
- I hadn’t finished my meal.
- Anthony hadn’t had a day off for months.
The ‘d contraction is also used for the auxiliary verb would. For example, we’d can mean:
- We had, OR
- We would
But usually the main verb is in a different form, for example:
- We had arrived (past participle)
- We would arrive (base)
It is always clear from the context.
How do we use the Past Perfect tense?
The Past Perfect tense expresses action in the past before another action in the past. This is the past in the past. For example:
- The train left at 9am. We arrived at 9:15am. When we arrived, the train had left.
| The train had left when we arrived. | |||||||||
| past | present | future | |||||||
| Train leaves in past at 9:00 | |||||||||
|
|||||||||
| We arrive in past at 9:15 | |||||||||
Look at some more examples:
- I wasn’t hungry. I had just eaten.
- They were hungry. They had not eaten for five hours.
- I didn’t know who he was. I had never seen him before.
- “Mary wasn’t at home when I arrived.” / “Really? Where had she gone?”
You can sometimes think of the Past Perfect tense like the Present Perfect tense, but instead of the time being now the time is before.
| have done → |
|||
| had done → |
|||
| past | present | future |
For example, imagine that you arrive at the station at 9:15am. The stationmaster says to you:
- “You are too late. The train has left.”
Later, you tell your friends:
- “We were too late. The train had left.”
We often use the Past Perfect in reported speech after verbs like: said, told, asked, thought, wondered
Look at these examples:
- He told us that the train had left.
- I thought I had met her before, but I was wrong.
- He explained that he had closed the window because of the rain.
- I wondered if I had been there before.
- I asked them why they had not finished.
Past Perfect Quiz
You can do this grammar quiz. It tests what you learned on the Past Perfect page.
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