Lesson 8
Past Perfect
While the present perfect uses “has” or “have,” the past perfect simply uses “had” with the past participle of the main verb.
| Positive | Negative | Question |
| I had eaten. | I had not eaten. | Had I eaten? |
| You had eaten. | You had not eaten. | Had you eaten? |
| We had eaten. | We had not eaten. | Had we eaten? |
| They had eaten. | They had not eaten. | Had they eaten? |
| He had eaten. | He had not eaten. | Had he eaten? |
| She had eaten. | She had not eaten. | Had she eaten? |
| It had eaten. | It had not eaten. | Had it eaten? |
The past perfect is used to refer to an event or action that took place prior to the time period considered. Therefore, in the examples above, the conversation would revolve around an event that took place in the past, but the eating took place before that. For example:
A: Do you remember last year when we first arrived at the hotel?
B: Yes, I remember. Oddly enough, I recall being very hungry!
A: Well, you had not eaten for hours.
In this case, we use the past perfect to show that the eating took place (or in this case, didn’t take place) before the arrival at the hotel.
Here are some more related uses:
- Describing repeated or extended situations
- We had lived in that house for six
- By then, they had studied for a long
- To explain a situation
- I wasn’t afraid because I had expected the
He felt confident because he had already prepared