A'orist

A'orist (Gr. aoristos, 'unlimited'), a form of the Greek verb by which an action is expressed as taking place in an indefinite time. It corresponds to the simple past tense in English, as 'he died.' The Greek language is especially fertile in the past tenses of verbs, having, in addition to the tenses common to other languages—namely, the imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect—the aorist, which is peculiarly adapted to the narrative style of writing. The distinction of first and second aorist is purely formal.