past tense vs preterite

past tense

noun
  • 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. 

preterite

noun
  • A grammatical tense or verb form serving to denote events that took place or were completed in the past. 

adj
  • Belonging wholly to the past; passed by. 

  • showing an action at a determined moment in the past. 

How often have the words past tense and preterite occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )