tense
Example Sentences
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Ms. Cline inhabits his thoughts in close third-person and though she writes in the past tense, her narration evokes an intimate, sometimes smothering feeling of presentness—of being confined within David’s immediate consciousness.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 1, 2026
Things have since quietened, she says, crediting patrols by the army and government-backed vigilantes, but the atmosphere is still tense.
From BBC ● Aug. 26, 2026
"Dolly is like a mother to everyone who lives here," said 24-year-old local Jonah La Grand, clad in a Dolly Parton t-shirt and speaking of her in the present tense.
From Barron's ● Aug. 26, 2026
That Jamieson kept his shape over a tense final few holes is testment to his resolve.
From BBC ● Aug. 23, 2026
I shook my head, hoping to shake away the tense jitters.
From "Sir Fig Newton and the Science of Persistence" by Sonja Thomas
“But when you speak in your mother tongue, your body tenses up a bit because you think, ‘I understand the full emotional spectrum of what I’m talking about.’
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2026
“When I’m frustrated and my eyes roll and my voice tenses, they feel that,” he said.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 23, 2026
Mr. Drout analyzes with clarity and humor Tolkien’s fascination with Finnish grammar, the distinctive ways he uses pronouns and the particular verb tenses he favors.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 12, 2025
Simon Cheng still visibly tenses when he describes his detention in China.
From New York Times ● May 27, 2024
Balancing the scales becomes more complicated as the tenses get more complicated.
From "Woe Is I" by Patricia T. O'Conner
The chase grows exponentially tenser as Miller begins shifting between close-ups and expansive long shots, the raucous noise and energy of the kidnappers on their hell machines working contrapuntally against the desert’s stillness.
From New York Times ● May 15, 2024
And this reaction evokes the challenge CNN faces as its news team barrels into a national election cycle that's already looking tenser and more fraught than 2020's or 2022's nailbiters.
From Salon ● Aug. 17, 2023
Things got tenser when Hyundai and LG Energy Solution announced a $4.3 billion electric battery plant in May at Hyundai’s new complex.
From Washington Times ● Jun. 27, 2023
Even as political relations have grown tenser, business ties have flourished.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 3, 2022
“Four, three, two . “Oppenheimer, on whom had rested a very heavy burden, grew tenser as the last seconds ticked off,” remembered Farrell.
From "Bomb" by Steve Sheinkin
But the tensest battle over the novel may have been fought in Panama City, Fla. in the mid-1980s.
From New York Times ● May 1, 2024
The tensest moment of the debate was when Bolsonaro called da Silva to stand next to him as he answered a question.
From Washington Times ● Oct. 29, 2022
Amid its tensest standoff with the West since the Cold War, Russia plans to give its nuclear weapons apparatus a practice run this weekend.
From Seattle Times ● Feb. 18, 2022
The comments were among the most conciliatory that Moscow has made on the Ukraine crisis, which has escalated into one of the tensest East-West standoffs since the Cold War ended three decades ago.
From Reuters ● Jan. 28, 2022
He speaks in the tensest voice I’ve ever heard him use.
From "Before We Were Free" by Julia Alvarez
When her sister, Rowe, walked in that morning, she found Waldorf with her eyes wide and glazed over, her jaw tensed.
From Salon ● May 27, 2026
“I wouldn’t say we tensed up. We just didn’t execute when we needed to.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 18, 2026
In a flash, she springs into action, her muscles tensed and claws unsheathed.
From BBC ● Feb. 21, 2025
It was too expensive to keep the fibers tensed all the time, plus it interfered with the electricity—but for earthquake-length bursts of time, the building and its occupants would be safe.
From Slate ● Jan. 27, 2024
This time when I came to the part where Miss Lilian turned against Georgie and me, he tensed, but he didn’t make me stop.
From "The Old Willis Place" by Mary Downing Hahn
My muscles were tensing at the torrent of oversharing.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
After a difficult doctor’s appointment with her mother recently, Thompson says she felt her whole body tensing up.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Nov. 29, 2025
"Sometimes, I catch myself tensing up," Justin said.
From Salon ● Oct. 1, 2023
“I’m tensing up. There’s a lot of stuff I can do to protect myself.”
From Seattle Times ● Mar. 8, 2023
I could feel myself blushing and tensing up to fight back.
From "The Journey of Little Charlie" by Christopher Paul Curtis
Vocabulary lists containing tense
A Long Walk to Water
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TEKS ELAR Academic Vocabulary List (5th-7th grades)
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Language and Grammar - Introductory
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