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The past, present and future tenses quite well represent what they are supposed to mean or be. But what's "perfect" about the perfect tense?
I am not asking for the usage of the perfect tense. I just need to know why they are called so. Thank you.
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The term Perfect is derived from Latin perfectus meaning "achieved, finished, completed".
The perfect tense or aspect is a verb form that indicates that an action or circumstance occurred earlier than the time under consideration, often focusing attention on the resulting state rather than on the occurrence itself.
In some analyses, perfect is identified as one of the grammatical aspects. In the perfect aspect, the event being referred to is viewed as already completed at the time of reference.
In modern grammars, particularly of English, perfect denotes an aspect independent of tense – the form corresponding to the traditional perfect ("I have done") is then called the present perfect, while that corresponding to the pluperfect ("I had done") is called the past perfect. (There are also additional forms such as future perfect, conditional perfect, and so on). The formation of the perfect in English, using forms of an auxiliary verb (have) together with the past participle of the main verb, is paralleled in a number of other modern European languages.
Refer to this Wikipedia page for more information on the perfect tense.
From wikipedia:
The word perfect in this sense means "completed" (from Latin perfectum, which is the perfect passive participle of the verb perficere "to complete").
So it is the tense when something has finished happening, not halfway through.
