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Glite Dictionary
🔈 Lax in speech ⏳ No time marking 😌 Relaxed
tenseless

tenseless

8.7
A verb form that does not show past, present, or future time
  • adjective
  • /ˈtɛnsləs/
  • Specialized
translation icon : sin tiempo verbal
  • In poetry, certain works convey emotions in a tenseless manner, focusing on universal themes rather than temporal constraints.

Examples

  • The author's style is often described as tenseless, avoiding any reference to specific time periods in their narratives.

  • His is not the special kind of speech that such writing inscribes; speech that is grammatically tensed but logically tenseless, speech that is not historical or contextual but consists of timeless propositions.

    Academic text (1991)

  • In philosophy, some theories propose a worldview where time is tenseless, emphasizing a static existence beyond past and future.

Antonyms

tense
  • Specialized
20 3.7

A verb form that shows when something happens, like past or future

Surface Forms

tenseless positive

Morphology

tenseless = tense (transparent) = tense + less

The adjective is directly formed from the noun 'tense' with '-less' to mean 'without grammatical tense'.

Etymology

Tenseless is tense + -less, where tense in grammar means 'time' (as in 'past' or 'present'). So a tenseless verb is 'without' time marking and does not show past, present, or future.