pluperfect

The pluperfect, also called the past perfect in English grammar, is a tense used to express an action that had been completed before another action or point in the past. It describes the relative past: an event situated earlier than another past moment.

In English, the pluperfect is formed with the auxiliary verb had followed by the past participle of the main verb. Examples include: She had eaten before they arrived. We had finished the project when the manager asked for the report. I had not seen him before that day. In narrative use, the pluperfect helps establish the order of past events and often appears with adverbs such as before, after, already.

Across languages, a similar value is expressed with an auxiliary verb plus a participle. In Romance languages the equivalent is formed with an imperfect of the auxiliary plus a past participle: Spanish habí a comido, French avait mangé, Italian avevo mangiato. In some languages the pluperfect has a dedicated tense form and can have a pluperfect subjunctive in conditional clauses, for example Spanish si hubiera sabido. The term itself derives from Latin pluperfectus, literally “more than perfect.”

Historically, the pluperfect is contrasted with the imperfect (ongoing past) and the simple past (narrated past events). In English it is the standard past perfect; in many languages it has a distinct form with nuanced usage in narrative and hypothetical contexts.