Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Of or being a verb tense used to express action completed before a specified or implied past time.
  • adjective More than perfect; supremely accomplished; ideal.
  • noun The pluperfect tense, formed in English with the past participle of a verb and the auxiliary had, as had learned in the sentence He had learned to type by the end of the semester.
  • noun A verb or form in the pluperfect tense.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In music, augmented: said of intervals.
  • Noting the time, or the expression of time, of an action occurring prior to another specified time: as, the pluperfect tense.
  • noun In grammar, the pluperfect tense of a verb, or an equivalent verb-phrase: for example, Latin amaveram, English ‘I had loved.’

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective More than perfect; past perfect; -- said of the tense which denotes that an action or event was completed at or before the time of another past action or event.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective More than perfect
  • adjective grammar Pertaining to action completed before or at the same time as another
  • noun The pluperfect tense
  • noun A verb in this tense

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective more than perfect
  • noun a perfective tense used to express action completed in the past

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English pluperfyth, alteration of Latin plūs quam perfectum, more than perfect : plūs, more; see pelə- in Indo-European roots + quam, than + perfectum, neuter past participle of perficere, to complete; see perfect.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Latin plus ("more") + perfectus ("complete, perfected")

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