Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

There is definitely a place for "had had".   Here's how it works:

Start with the present tense:   I have it.   Future tense is that I will have it, and simple past tense that I had it.

Now, sometimes we need to say something more complex.   Suppose I'm telling a story about the past, and need to talk about what was past or future then.   For example, let's say the story line goes like this:   I am brushing my teeth, and I had a tube of toothpaste but now I cannot find it so I will have to buy some more.   If I tell this story in the past tense, then I was brushing my teeth; I had had a tube of toothpaste, but now[or "then", if you prefer] I couldn't find it so I would have to buy some more.

If the events are still future, then I will be brushing my teeth, and I will have had a tube of toothpaste but now I won't be able to find it, so I will have to go buy some more.

You'll notice we're missing some forms in English.   There is no future form of "can", so we say "will be able to..." instead.   And we don't have a satisfactory future-future tense; we sometimes "will be about to..." or "will plan to..." or some such, but just as often say just "will" and let context fill it in.   Oh, and just to make things even more confusing, would is the past tense of will.

There are other verbs that are missing some of their forms.   We don't have a past tense of "go", so we use the past tense of "wend" instead, though "wend" is rarely used for anything else.

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I see semicolons all the time.   Me, I think I tend to overuse them.   I remember a story once about ... well, it was about either a famous journalist or a famous newspaper editor, though I don't remember which; all I remember is that after complaining a few times that the journalist used semicolons too much, the editor came out of his office once day, walked up to the journalist's typewriter, filed off the semicolon and walked back into his office.   I take it as a cautionary tale for me.

I've always liked that joke, Glenn, though I haven't thought of it in a while.   Thanks for a good laugh.

I didn't mention the past perfect or pluperfect (are they the same?) partly because no one ever explained to me exactly what they are, and even more because there's a niggling doubt in my mind whether TECHNICALLY the pluperfect appears in my example.   Here's what I'm thinking:   Generally speaking, in English we have simple, continuous and perfect times, right?

Simple: I look it up, I will look it up, I looked it up.

Continuous: I am looking it up, I will be looking it up, I was looking it up.

Perfect: I have looked it up, I will have looked it up, I had looked it up.

The perfect is not a past tense, nor a tense at all, but a TIME; "I have looked it up" describes a situation that exists IN THE PRESENT because of an action I took in the past.   In a manner of speaking, I am presently in the state of having looked it up.

Now, the situation I described in the previous post is conceptually different:   When I wanted to brush my teeth, and knew I'd had a tube but now I couldn't find it, I am NOT saying that I was at the time in the state of having previously had a tube; I'm attempting to render the simple past ("I had a tube") from the point of view of a past event.   It is not the past simple, and not the past perfect, but (so to speak) the past-past—a "complex" tense, if I may coin a term.   We use "I had had a tube" to indicate both the past perfect and the past-past simple, but the meaning is different.

So the reason I didn't mention pluperfect or past perfect, is that I wasn't sure a) whether they are the same thing, nor b) whether it (or they) refer to the past-tense/perfect-time, or the past-past-tense/simple-time, or...?   Any ideas?