If you are an English as an additional language learner and have learned the most basic tenses in English such as the present simple, the present continuous, the past simple, the past continuous, the future simple, the future continuous, and the present perfect, it is time for you to take a step further and master the past perfect tense. In case you need to remember all of these tenses, check out this amazing overview of all verb tenses in English!
How to Form the Past Perfect
The past perfect tense in English is formed with had + past participle. The past participle form of a regular verb is its -ed form and the past participle form of an irregular verb is the one you find in the third column of the list of irregular verbs in English.
| AFFIRMATIVE | NEGATIVE | QUESTION | |
| I | I had eaten | I hadn’t eaten | Had I eaten? |
| You | You had eaten | You hadn’t eaten | Had you eaten? |
| He/she/it | He/she/it had eaten | He/she/it hadn’t eaten | Had he/she/it eaten? |
| We | We had eaten | We hadn’t eaten | Had we eaten? |
| You | You had eaten | You hadn’t eaten | Had you eaten? |
| They | They had eaten | They hadn’t eaten | Had they eaten? |
How to Use the Past Perfect
The past perfect is used to describe something that happened in the past but before another thing in the past. In this sense, using the present perfect makes the sequence of the events you are talking about clearer. The most distant event in the past will be referred to in the past perfect, and the most recent event in the past will be referred to in the past simple.
| SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED BEFORE SOMETHING IN THE PAST | PAST | PRESENT (NOW) | FUTURE |
| had worked | worked | – | – |
| had done | did | – | – |
| had played | played | – | – |
| had met | met | – | – |
| had seen | saw | – | – |
Contractions
In informal, everyday conversation, contractions are usually used.
| FULL FORM | CONTRACTED FORM |
| I had | I’d |
| You had | you’d |
| He/she/it had | He’d/she’d/it’d |
| We had | We’d |
| They had | They’d |
You may be asking yourself how you can differentiate the contraction would from the contraction of had, right?
It is simple: look at the form of the verb after the contraction. The contraction of would will always be followed by a verb in its base form (infinitive), and the contraction of had will always be followed by a verb in its past participle form.
Short Answers
Use short answers to answer a question in the past perfect.
| QUESTION WITH OTHER VERBS | SHORT ANSWER |
| Had I worked? | Yes, I had OR No, I hadn’t. |
| Had you done your homework? | Yes, you had OR No, you hadn’t. |
| Had he/she/it played? | Yes, he/she/it had OR No, he/she/it hadn’t. |
| Had we met before that? | Yes, we had OR No, we hadn’t. |
| Had they seen a shooting star? | Yes, they had OR No, they hadn’t. |
Wh Question Words With the Past Perfect Tense in English
When WH question words are used with questions in the past perfect, they go before had. Look at the examples below:
| What had they done? |
| Where had you lived? |
| What time had he woken up? |
| When had we planned that? |
| Which had they preferred: watching movies or playing board games? |
The Past Perfect Tense in English with Conditionals
The past perfect tense in English is also used with two types of conditional sentences, namely the third conditional and mixed conditionals. Click on each of them to learn more about it. Examples for each are shown below.
| THIRD CONDITIONAL | MIXED CONDITIONAL |
| If I had studied more, I would have passed the test. | If I had saved money, I wouldn’t be in debt now. |
Real-life Examples
All sentences below were taken from the book The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
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I had crashed in the desert a thousand miles from any inhabited region. |
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The only mountains he had ever known were the three volcanoes, which came up to his knees. |
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But I had never drawn a sheep. |
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So I drew for him one of the two pictures I had drawn so often. |
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He had taken seriously words which were without importance, and it made him very unhappy. |
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He had already traveled so much and so far! |
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It was the most magnificent and stately planet that he had ever seen. |
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The flower had once seen a caravan passing. |
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“But what does that mean–‘ephemeral’?” repeated the little prince, who never in his life had let go of a question, once he had asked it. |
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His flower had told him that she was the only one of her kind in all the universe. |
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