A grammatical form (often a verb form) that refers to an event, transaction, occurrence, or object that happened (or had happened), or existed, at some time before now (the applicable reference time).
A grammatical form (often a verb form) that is used in a conditional expression to refer to an event, transaction, occurrence, or object that is hypothetical and often counterfactual.
A grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time.