English tenses › Past Perfect
Past Perfect
Past Perfect shows that one past action happened before another past action or moment: the past of the past.
Form
When to use it
Earlier past
Before another past action.
When I got to the station, the train had left.
Reported speech
Present Perfect or Past Simple moves back.
She said she had seen the film.
Third conditional
Imagined past situations.
If I had known, I would have helped.
Time words
before, after, already, by the time, when, never… before
Examples
- I had never seen so much rain.
- By the time we arrived, the show had started.
- Had you met him before?
- She hadn’t eaten all day.
- He told me he had lost his job.
- They had already gone home.
Common mistake
I had visited Rome last year.
I visited Rome last year.
Use Past Perfect only when you need to show that something happened before another past moment.
Past Perfect or Past Simple?
Past Simple keeps events in order; Past Perfect jumps back: The film had started when we arrived. More about Past Simple.
Hear it in videos
See it in real speech. Paste any YouTube link into Tense Lens and every tense in the video is highlighted as it is spoken, with a map of where each one appears.