agregaban

Agregaban is the imperfect indicative form of the Spanish verb agregar, used with third-person plural subjects. It expresses an ongoing or habitual action in the past, meaning “they were adding” or “they used to add.” The form appears in narrative and descriptive texts to describe processes of assembly, compilation, or inclusion that occurred over time.

The verb agregar means to add, to include, or to append elements to a set, list, mixture, or collection. It can refer to concrete actions, such as adding ingredients to a recipe, as well as abstract ones, like adding items to a list, data to a dataset, or ideas to an argument. In everyday language, its use spans cooking, writing, science, and business contexts, where the act of adding components is central to the described activity.

In Spanish, agregar is related historically to the Latin adgregare, from ad- “to” and greg- “gather.” This lineage is reflected in related terms such as agregación (aggregation) and agregante (an additive or aggregating agent in chemistry and related fields). The imperfect form agregaban commonly appears when recounting past steps in a procedure, describing a series of additions that occurred over time.

Conjugation notes: agregaban corresponds to ellos/ellas/ustedes form. It contrasts with agregaron (preterite, a completed action) and agregaré (future). Examples illustrate its use in describing ongoing past additions rather than a single completed act.