Roinsard fielded questions in a heavy French accent, frequently mixing up his tenses and appealing to a translator for a lifeline.
My apologies if the tenses in the preceeding sentence are grammatically incorrect.
Anyone who has tried to learn a second language is familiar with the maddening irregular verbs, conjugations, and tenses.
He plays fast and loose with tenses, slipping into the present, stopping the reader short in front of a brick wall.
In all the moods and tenses of the little maid the doctor looked for and found reminiscences of her mother.
The morning wore on, and tenses and moods gave place to drill.
Each mood has but three tenses which have distinct forms; these are preterit, present, and future.
"You are not quite right in your tenses, Austin," she remarked.
He was a very temperamental stenographer and understood the moods and tenses of his most temperamental employer fully.
The denotation of the tenses was effected by appropriate signs.
"stretched tight," 1660s, from Latin tensus, past participle of tendere "to stretch" (see tenet). Sense of "in a state of nervous tension" is first recorded 1821.
"form of a verb showing time of an action or state," early 14c., tens "time," also "tense of a verb" (late 14c.), from Old French tens "time" (11c.), from Latin tempus (see temporal).
"to make tense," 1670s, from tense (adj.); intransitive sense of "to become tense" (often tense up) is recorded from 1946. Related: Tensed; tensing.
An inflectional (see inflection) form of verbs; it expresses the time at which the action described by the verb takes place. The major tenses are past, present, and future. The verb in “I sing” is in the present tense; in “I sang,” past tense; in “I will sing,” future tense. Other tenses are the present perfect (“I have sung”), the past perfect (“I had sung”), and the future perfect (“I will have sung”).