indicativeimperfect

Indicative imperfect, commonly referred to as the imperfect indicative, is a past tense form used in the indicative mood in many languages, especially Romance languages, to describe ongoing, habitual, or background actions and states in the past. It provides temporal framing that emphasizes duration, repetition, or circumstances rather than completion.

In usage, the imperfect describes habitual past actions (what someone used to do), ongoing past actions (what was happening at a time), mental or physical states in the past, ages, or time settings. For example, in Spanish: “Cuando era niño, jugaba al fútbol todos los días” (as a child I used to play soccer daily), “Yo leía cuando sonó el teléfono” (I was reading when the phone rang), “Eran las tres” (It was three o’clock), “Tenía diez años” (I was ten years old). These readings contrast with the preterite, which denotes completed actions.

Formation varies by language. In Spanish, two main groups exist: -ar verbs use endings -aba, -abas, -aba, -ábamos, -abais, -aban; -er/-ir verbs use -ía, -ías, -ía, -íamos, -íais, -ían. Irregulars include ser: era, eras, era, éramos, eran; ir: iba, ibas, iba, íbamos, iban; ver: veía, veías, veía, veíamos, veíais, veían. Other languages have analogous forms with their own endings, such as French imparfait, Italian imperfetto, and Portuguese pretérito imperfeito, serving similar temporal and aspectual functions.

Relation to other tenses: the imperfect typically contrasts with the preterite (completed past actions) and with perfect tenses that relate past events to the present. The term “indicative imperfect” thus denotes a fundamental past-tense category that conveys modality of ambiguity about completion, focusing instead on non-punctual past states and repetitions.