Word Confusion: Tense versus Tents

Plural for the noun: tenses
Gerund: tensing

Third person present verb: tenses
Past tense or past participle: tensed
Present participle: tensing

Plural for the noun: tents
Gerund: tenting

Third person present verb: tents
Past tense or past participle: tented
Present participle: tenting

• High-strung
• Taut
• [Of a person] Unable to relax because of nervousness, anxiety, or stimulation
• [Of a situation, event, etc.] Causing or showing anxiety and nervousness
• [Phonetics; of a speech sound, especially a vowel] Pronounced with the vocal muscles stretched tight

Noun:
[Grammar] A set of forms taken by a verb to indicate the time (and sometimes also the continuance or completeness) of the action in relation to the time of the utterance ²

Verb, intransitive:
Become tense, typically through anxiety or nervousness ¹

Verb, transitive:
Make a muscle or one’s body tight or rigid ¹

• Something that resembles a tent
• [Medicine] Short for oxygen tent
• The web of a tent caterpillar

[Scotland] A portable pulpit set up outside to accommodate worshippers who cannot fit into a church

[Obsolete] A deep red sweet wine chiefly from Spain, used especially as sacramental wine ³

[Surgery] A probe

[Surgery] A piece of absorbent material inserted into an opening to keep it open, or especially to widen it gradually as the material absorbs moisture ⁴

A plug of soft material for insertion into a bodily canal, etc., to dilate it or maintain its patency ⁷

Verb, intransitive:
[Especially of traveling circus people] Live in a tent ²

• Encamp

Verb, transitive:
Cover with or as if with a tent ²

• [As adjective tented] Composed of or provided with tents
• Arrange in a shape that looks like a tent

To lodge in tents

To cover with or as if with a tent

To keep (a wound) open with a tent ⁴

[Chiefly Scottish] To give or pay attention to ⁶

• To pay heed to
• To attend
• Wait on

[Medicine] To insert a plug of soft material into a bodily canal, etc. ⁷

He was tense with excitement.

Relations between the two neighboring states had been tense in recent years.

The ē sound in keen requires tense vocal muscles.

Jenny is always very tense before an exam.

It’s been a tense standoff between the border patrols for months.

Noun:
The past tense is the opposite of the future tense.

Historic past tense is handy to give a sense of immediacy in a story.

Future perfect progressive is an indicative verb, describing a continuing action that will be completed at some specified time in the future.

It generally uses dynamic verbs, although this tense is rarely used.

Verb, intransitive:
Her body tensed up.

She tensed up as people stared and laughed.

I tensed up and squeezed her hand harder.

Star tensed up in fear.

He used to get quite tensed up and panicky about things, but that is all in the past now.

He tensed up again as he was confronted by the cold glares of his wife.

Verb, transitive:
Carefully stretch and then tense your muscles.

I must have tensed my body at the wrong time; my ribs were in agony.

In order to widen your eyes, you must tense certain muscles in your face.

She wrung her hands nervously behind her back, shoulders tensing and untensing.

You have to be able to tense your body and keep the defender from getting around you.

Shallow breathing often results from tensing your upper body.

My hands tensed up into fists.

Did you bring the two-man tent?

Get those tent pegs pounded in deep.

She wore a tent dress to the party.

Get that tent over that man!

Back in the day, one way to get rid of the measles was to drink tent wine.

Did the tent wines come in from Malaga?

“A splendid tent was erected on the brae north of the town, and round that the countless congregation assembled” (Hogg).

Verb, intransitive:
A rival group, the Worker’s Ex-Servicemen League, Communist vets at odds with Waters’ group, tented at 14th and D streets in Southwest Washington (McArdle).

The house has been tented so they can spray with pesticides.

Josh has been asking around about how one goes tenting.

These cannot be dismissed unless the university will allow me to tent and maintain a garden in the Quad.

It is our first night of camping, and I am tenting with Dolly, Patricia, and Joanne.

We’ll be tented at the campground this weekend.

The sheet tented over his midsection.

Verb, transitive:
The garden had been completely tented over for supper.

They were living in large tented camps.

Tim tented his fingers.

We need to tent this wound.

In winter the tennis courts are tented in plastic.

Tent me.

1. Late 17th century from the Latin tensus meaning stretched, which is from the verb tendere.
2. Middle English in the general sense of time is from the Old French tens, from the Latin tempus meaning time.

1. Middle English from the Old French tente is based on the Latin tent- meaning stretched and is from the verb tendere.
2. The verb dates from the mid-16th century.
3. Late Middle English from the Spanish tinto meaning deep-coloured, from the Latin tinctus meaning dyed, stained; from the verb tingere.
4. Late Middle English (also denoting a surgical probe) is from the Old French tente, from tenter meaning to probe, and from the Latin temptare meaning handle, test, try.
5. Middle English, 1250–1300, derivative of tent (noun) meaning attention, an aphetic variant of attent from the Old French atente meaning attention, intention, which is from the Latin attenta, the feminine of attentus, a past participle of attendere meaning to attend.
6. 1250–1300, Middle English, a derivative of tent (noun) meaning attention, aph. variant of attent from the Old French atente meaning attention, intention from the Latin attenta, feminine of attentus, past participle of attendere meaning to attend.
7. In the sense of a probe, which is from the Old French tente (noun), and ultimately from the Latin temptāre meaning to try.