Simple Past

The simple past or past simple, sometimes called the preterite, is the basic form of the past tense in Modern English. It is used principally to describe events in the past.

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 past perfect and past progressive.

Regular verbs form the simple past in -ed; however there are a few hundred irregular verbs with different forms. For details see English verbs: Past tense.

Questions, other clauses requiring inversion, negations with not, and emphatic forms of the simple past use the auxiliary did. For details of this, see do-support. For more information about syntax see English clause syntax: Simple past.