'preterite' is a correct word in written English.
It is used to describe an action or event that happened in the past. Example sentence: I had forgotten about the preterite event until I saw the photograph.
A Spanish verb has six present-tense forms, and six each in the preterite, imperfect, future, conditional, subjunctive and two different past subjunctives, for a total of 48 forms.
In the preterite transitive active form, the order of object and subject elements is reversed.
The verb can distinguish, in addition to person and number, transitivity and intransitivity, active and passive voice, and two tenses, present-future and preterite.
Ablaut is characteristic of the G-stem, as demonstrated by the vowels a and u in Akkadian present i-parras versus preterite i-prus.
The Akkadian preterite i-prus '(he) divided' and present tense i-parras '(he) is dividing' provide another example, this time formed on the root √prs.
The diphthongs ei (as well as ai) and au in final position were monophthongized and later shortened in Latvian e.g., Lithuanian ved-eĩ (2nd person singular preterite) = Latvian *ved-ie, which became ved-i "you led"; Lithuanian med-aũs = Latvian *med-uos, which became med-us "of honey".
In Norwegian and Swedish a new class of weak verbs with preterite ending -dde has arisen, including stems ending in -d or long vowels (Swedish födde 'bore,' bodde 'lived'lived
With few exceptions, the sigmatic aorist (an aorist form with s) provides the only productive finite preterite forms of early Middle Indo-Aryan e.g., Aśokan nIndo-Aryan ethey set out' (Sanskrit nir-a-kramiṣur).g.
The Anatolian verb inflects for singular and plural, as in the noun; for two tenses, present (also used for the future) and preterite (past); and for two moods, indicative and imperative.
