The Imperfectpast, ongoing, in motion

The English name "imperfect" is misleading. It sounds like "flawed" or "incomplete." What the Greek imperfect really carries is imperfective aspect — action portrayed AS IN PROCESS, not as a snapshot. The imperfect locates that imperfective action in past time. So the imperfect carries two things at once: PAST TIME + IMPERFECTIVE ASPECT.

Compare the three indicative tenses you'll meet in past time:

• Imperfect — past time + imperfective aspect ("he was loosing / he kept loosing / he used to loose"). This lesson.
• Aorist — past time + perfective aspect, the action as a snapshot ("he loosed"). Lesson 15.
• Pluperfect — past time + stative aspect, the abiding past state ("he had loosed"). Lesson 20.

The imperfect shares its STEM with the present (both use the "present stem"). What changes between them is (a) the augment is added, and (b) the personal endings shift from primary to secondary. Everything you memorized for the present is reused.

Every past-tense INDICATIVE verb in Greek carries an augment. The augment is the morphological marker of past time; no augment = no past tense. It comes in three flavors:

1. Syllabic — for consonant-initial stems, prepend ἐ-. λύω → ἔλυον.
2. Temporal — for vowel-initial stems, LENGTHEN the initial vowel. α → η, ε → η, ο → ω. ἀκούω → ἤκουον; ὁράω → ἑώρων.
3. Compound — for preposition+verb compounds, the augment goes BETWEEN the preposition and the stem. ἀπολύω → ἀπέλυον (NEVER ἠπολύον).

The augment appears only in the indicative. Subjunctive, imperative, infinitive, and participle past-tense forms have no augment. (Lessons 22+.)

Past-tense indicative verbs use a different set of personal endings — the secondary endings. Two sets:

• Secondary active: -ον, -ες, -ε(ν), -ομεν, -ετε, -ον. Notice: 1 sg AND 3 pl are BOTH -ον. ἔλυον = "I was loosing" OR "they were loosing." Context decides.
• Secondary M/P (surface): -ομην, -ου, -ετο, -ομεθα, -εσθε, -οντο. The 2 sg -ου comes from the historical -σο via the same σ-drop you saw in the present 2 sg M/P, only the contraction product is different (-ου here, -ῃ in the present).

The 1 pl and 2 pl active endings are IDENTICAL across primary and secondary (-ομεν, -ετε). The augment is what marks past time in those forms — without it the form is present, with it it's imperfect.

Any single imperfect form can validly translate three ways. ἔλυε(ν) can be:

1. Simple past — "he loosed." (Used when progressive English sounds awkward.)
2. Progressive past — "he was loosing." (Default; captures imperfective aspect cleanly.)
3. Inceptive / conative past — "he began to loose" / "he was trying to loose." (Used when context signals beginning, or attempt-without-completion.)

The Greek form gives you no help in picking; you choose by reading context. Adverbs like καθ' ἡμέραν ("daily") cue customary/iterative readings; ἀλλ' οὐκ ἐδύναντο ("but they were not able") cues conative; narrative openings often cue inceptive. The most common Gospel default is progressive English.

The imperfect's twin in past time is the aorist (Lesson 15). The two tenses split past time by ASPECT:

• Imperfect = past + imperfective. The action is portrayed AS IN PROCESS, like a movie running. ἐδίδασκεν = "he was teaching" (extended scene).
• Aorist = past + perfective. The action is portrayed AS A SNAPSHOT — bundled into a single complete unit. ἐδίδαξεν = "he taught" (one event).

NT narrative often alternates the two: imperfect for background ("Jesus was teaching..."), aorist for events ("and a man came..."). Mark in particular paints scenes this way. Imperfect aspect is the "movie" texture; aorist aspect is the "snapshot" texture. Reading them together fluently is one of the skills this lesson trains you for.

Morphologically the two are different. Imperfect uses the present stem + augment + secondary endings (ἔλυον). First aorist uses a different stem with a -σα- formative + augment + secondary endings (ἔλυσα). Different paradigms — never confuse them.

The six secondary active endings as raw morphological suffixes — no augment, no connecting vowel, no accent.

Add the augment ἐ- (syllabic, since λυ- begins with a consonant). Attach the stem λυ-. Use the connecting vowel ο before μ/ν, ε elsewhere. Then add the secondary ending.

The surface paradigm with accents and translations. This is what you memorize.

The middle/passive paradigm follows the same recipe with the secondary M/P endings. The only special cell is the 2 sg ἐλύου, where historical -σο drops its σ between vowels and the resulting ε + ο contracts to -ου. (Compare the present 2 sg M/P -σαι → -ῃ — same σ-drop principle, different contraction product.) Middle and passive forms are IDENTICAL in the imperfect, just as in the present; context decides.

So far in the verb course, you've learned:

• Lesson 10 — the present active indicative (λύω, λύομεν...) and the five categories every Greek verb encodes: person, number, tense, voice, mood.
• Lesson 11 — contract verbs (ἀγαπῶ, ποιῶ, πληρῶ) and how vowels merge.
• Lesson 12 — the present middle/passive (λύομαι) and the three voices.
• Lesson 13 — the irregular verb εἰμί ("to be").

Every verb form you've seen has been in present tense. Now we shift. The imperfect is the first past tense in your toolkit. Three new things to learn:

1. The augment — a prefix added to the verb that signals past time.
2. A different set of endings (called "secondary endings") used by past tenses.
3. The imperfect's aspect — what kind of past action it portrays. (Greek doesn't just have one past tense; it has several, distinguished mostly by aspect.)

Don't worry — most of what you already know transfers. The verb stem is the same. The personal endings are similar to what you know, just modified. The big new ideas are the augment and aspect; we'll take them one at a time.

English usually marks tense (past/present/future) and lets aspect drift. Greek puts aspect first. The two main past-tense forms have different aspects:

Imperfect = ongoing action in the past. "I was loosing." "I used to loose." "I kept loosing." Process, repetition, habit.

Aorist (Lessons 15–17) = simple, undefined action in the past. "I loosed." A snapshot, not a movie.

The same English sentence can correspond to either Greek tense depending on aspect. Choosing well is part of NT translation.

For verbs beginning with a consonant, the augment is simply ἐ- placed before the verb stem.

For verbs beginning with a vowel, the augment lengthens that vowel rather than adding ἐ- in front:

1. Progressive imperfect — action in process at a past moment. "He was teaching."

2. Customary or habitual imperfect — repeated action over time. "He used to teach."

3. Iterative imperfect — repeated discrete events. "He kept teaching them."

4. Inceptive (ingressive) imperfect — beginning of an action. "He began teaching."

5. Conative imperfect — attempted but unfinished action. "He was trying to teach."