Pluperfect

[While we are waiting.]

[“An Intense Tense.” Zippy, November 6, 2020.]

Today’s Zippy raises a question hitherto unasked in comics. Having thought of “hitherto unasked,” I couldn’t not type it.

What’s your favorite part of grammar? I want to say, with Sarah Palin, “All of ’em.” But my genuine answer might be adjective order, an astonishing example of how rules are built into language in ways that we may not even realize. As they say, language speaks us.

I also like the past subjunctive, because it can be a challenge, like an extreme sport.

When did you last hear someone speak of the pluperfect tense? For me, it might have been in eighth-grade English with Mrs. Skewes. And now she wants me to correct Zippy. It is called the pluperfect, or the past perfect, Zippy, not “past pluperfect.”

See also the “future pluperfect.”

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