tense
Listen:Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
tense1
▶adjective
- 1 (especially of a muscle) stretched tight or rigid.
- 2 (of a person) unable to relax.
■ causing or showing anxiety and nervousness.
- 3 Phonetics (of a speech sound, especially a vowel) pronounced with the vocal muscles stretched tight. The opposite of lax.
– derivatives
tensely adverb,
tenseness noun,
tensity noun (rare).
tensely adverb,
tenseness noun,
tensity noun (rare).
– origin C17: from L. tensus, tendere ‘to stretch’.
Concise Oxford English Dictionary © 2008 Oxford University Press:
tense2
▶noun Grammar a set of forms taken by a verb to indicate the time (and sometimes the continuance or completeness) of the action in relation to the time of the utterance.
– derivatives
tenseless adjective.
tenseless adjective.
– origin ME: from OFr. tens, from L. tempus ‘time’.
'tense' also found in these Oxford entries:
adrenalized
- aorist
- backshift
- boil
- breathe
- came
- capeesh
- clamber
- clear
- clove hitch
- conjugation
- -ed
- edge
- edgy
- -es
- -eth
- exit
- expound
- finite
- flex
- future
- future perfect
- gist
- go
- hang
- hight
- historic
- historic present
- if
- imperfect
- infinitive
- inflection
- key
- knife-edge
- knot
- lax
- lay
- may
- must
- non-finite
- ought
- pack
- past
- perfect
- pluperfect
- present
- preterite
- progressive
- pry
- quoth
