The simple past, past simple, or past indefinite, in English equivalent to the preterite, is the basic form of the past tense in Modern English. It is used principally to describe events in the past, although it also has some other uses. Regular English verbs form the past simple in -ed; however, there are a few hundred irregular verbs with different forms.
The term "simple" is used to distinguish the syntactical construction whose basic form uses the plain past tense alone, from other past tense constructions which use auxiliaries in combination with participles, such as the present perfect, past perfect, and past progressive.
Formation
Regular verbs form the past simple end-ed; however there are a few hundred irregular verbs with different forms. For details see .
Most verbs have a single form of the past simple, independent of the person or number of the subject (there is no addition of -s for the third person singular as in the present simple). However, the copula verb be has two past tense forms: was for the first and third persons singular, and were in other instances. for information on this, see English subjunctive. This is the only case in modern English where a distinction in form is made between inversion, negations with not, and emphatic forms of the past simple use the auxiliary did. The same can apply to states, if temporary (e.g. the ball was lying on the sidewalk), but some stative verbs do not generally use the progressive aspect at all, typically verbs of mental states (know, believe, need), of emotional states (love, dislike, prefer), of possession (have, own), of senses (hear) and some others (consist, exist, promise) – see – and in these cases the past simple is used even for a temporary state:
::The dog was in its kennel.
::I felt cold.
However, with verbs of sensing, it is common in such circumstances to use could see in place of saw, could hear in place of heard, etc. For more on this, see can see.