Use
The simple past is used when discussing or enquiring about actions or situations that occurred in the past.
- I planted the seed on Friday.
- I came home at 6 o'clock.
- When did they get married?
- We walked to school every day.
- Charles entered the hall, looked around, took off his coat and sat down.
It is used in condition clauses and some others to express a hypothetical circumstance, usually one contrary to fact, but not relating specifically to the past:
- If he walked faster, he would get home earlier.
For its use in indirect speech, see sequence of tenses.
Read more about this topic: Simple Past
Famous quotes containing the word use:
“... it is use, and use alone, which leads one of us, tolerably trained to recognize any criterion of grace or any sense of the fitness of things, to tolerate ... the styles of dress to which we are more or less conforming every day of our lives. Fifty years hence they will seem to us as uncultivated as the nose-rings of the Hottentot seem today.”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)