8. Past Perfect

Use of the past perfect

It is used to:

1.Express an event or action in the past that happened BEFORE another action in the past.

Example: I wasn’t hungry because I had eaten lunch. (I didn’t feel hungry because I ate lunch before that moment)

2. Something that began in the past and continued until another point in time. Similarly to how the present perfect tells us how long something has happened, the past perfect tells us how long something happened until another point in the past. 

Example: I’d lived in Valencia for two years before I moved to Madrid.

3. The past perfect is also used in the 3rd conditional. We have an entire course dedicated to the conditionals, so that is the best place to practice them!

Example: If we hadn’t arrived so early, we would have missed the plane.

Quick Tip:

Notice in the examples above, in ALL the examples, HAD marks the action done BEFORE another action. I had eaten before you offered to cook. This is important to keep in mind as the past perfect is all about organising past actions.

Summary