A hodiernal tense (

abbreviated An abbreviation (from Latin ''brevis'', meaning ''short'') is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method. It may consist of a group of letters or words taken from the full version of the word or phrase; for example, the word ''abbrevia ...

) is a

grammatical tense In grammar, tense is a grammatical category, category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their grammatical conjugation, conjugation patterns. The main tenses foun ...

for the current day. (''Hodie'' or ''hodierno die'' is

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

for 'today'.) Hodiernal tenses refer to events of today (in an absolute tense system) or of the day under consideration (in a relative tense system). Hodiernal

past tense The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some hav ...

refers to events of earlier today (or earlier than the reference point of the day under consideration), while hodiernal

future tense In grammar, a future tense (abbreviated ) is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French ''aimera'', meaning ...

refers to events of later today (or later than the reference point of the day under consideration). A post-hodiernal tense is a future tense for events that will occur after today or the day under consideration, while pre-hodiernal is a past tense for events that occurred before today or the day under consideration. Languages which include or included hodiernal tenses include Mwera and

Classical French French is a Romance language (meaning that it is descended primarily from Vulgar Latin) that specifically is classified under the Gallo-Romance languages. The discussion of the history of a language is typically divided into "external histor ...

(it is suggested that in 17th-century French, the ''

passé composé The ''passé composé'' (, ''compound past'') (meaning compound past) is a past tense in the modern French language. It is used to express an action that has been finished completely or incompletely at the time of speech, or at some (possibly un ...

'' served as a hodiernal past).

Mwotlap Mwotlap (pronounced ; formerly known as ''Motlav'') is an Oceanic language spoken by about 2,100 people in Vanuatu. The majority of speakers are found on the island of Motalava in the Banks Islands, with smaller communities in the islands of Ra ...

(

Vanuatu Vanuatu ( or ; ), officially the Republic of Vanuatu (french: link=no, République de Vanuatu; bi, Ripablik blong Vanuatu), is an island country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is east of no ...

) has a hodiernal future, which is the only

absolute tense Relative tense and absolute tense are distinct possible uses of the grammatical category of Grammatical tense, tense. Absolute tense means the grammatical expression of time reference (usually past tense, past, present tense, present or future tense ...

of its TAM system. The term 'hodiernal past' was first used in publications in 1968.Google ngrams.

References

Grammatical tenses {{grammar-stub