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Grammatical tense
Grammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at, during, or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs.
Tense is one of at least five qualities, along with mood, voice, aspect, and person, which verb forms may express.
Tenses cannot always be translated from one language to another. While verbs in all languages have typical forms by which they are identified and indexed in dictionaries, usually the most common present tense or an infinitive, their meanings vary among languages.
There are languages (such as isolating languages, like Chinese) in which tense is not used, but implied in temporal adverbs when needed, and some (such as Japanese) in which temporal information appears in the inflection of adjectives, lending them a verb-like quality. In some languages (such as Russian) a simple verb may indicate aspect and tense.

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Classification of tenses

Tenses can be broadly classified as:
absolute tense: indicates time in relationship to the time of the utterance (i.e. “now”). For example, “I am sitting down”, the tense is indicated in relation to the present moment.
relative tense: in relationship to some other time, other than the time of utterance, e.g. “While strolling through the shops, she saw a nice dress in the window”. The relationship between the time of “strolling” and the time of utterance is not clearly specified.
absolute-relative: indicates time in relationship to some other event, whose time in turn is relative to the time of utterance. (Thus, in absolute-relative tense, the time of the verb is indirectly related to the time of the utterance; in absolute tense, it is directly related; in relative tense, its relationship to the time of utterance is left unspecified.) Here, “saw” is present relative to the “walked”, and “walked” is past relative to the time of the utterance, thus “saw” is in absolute-relative tense.
All of the following tenses may occur in either an absolute or a relative frame.
Tenses can be quite finely distinguished from one another, although no language will express simply all of these distinctions. As we will see, some of these tenses in fact involve elements of modality (e.g. predictive and not-yet tenses), but they are difficult to classify clearly as either tenses or moods.
Many languages define tense not just in terms of past/future/present, but also in terms of how far into the past or future they are. Thus they introduce concepts of closeness or remoteness, or tenses that are relevant to the measurement of time into days (hodiernal or hesternal tenses).
Some languages also distinguish not just between past, present, and future, but also nonpast, nonpresent, nonfuture. Each of these latter tenses incorporates two of the former, without specifying which.
Some tenses:
Future tenses. Some languages have different future tenses to indicate how far into the future we are talking about. Near future tense: in the near future, soon
Hodiernal future tense: sometime today
Vespertine future tense: sometime this evening; after dusk
Post-hodiernal future tense: sometime after today
Crastinal future tense: on the day of tomorrow; after today
Remote future tense: in the more distant future
Predictive future tense: a future tense which expresses a prediction rather than an intention, i.e., “I predict he will lose the election, although I want him to win”. As such, it is really more of a mood than a tense. (Its tenseness rather than modality lies in the fact that you can predict the future, but not the past.)
Nonfuture tense: refers to either the present or the past, but does not clearly specify which. Contrasts with future.
Nonpast tense: refers to either the present or the future, but does not clearly specify which. Contrasts with past.
In English, it is expressed with “not yet”, hence its name.
Past tenses. Some languages have different past tenses to indicate how far into the past we are talking about.
Hesternal past tense: yesterday or early, but not remote
Hodiernal past tense: sometime earlier today
Matutinal past tense: sometime in the morning or early in the day before noon
Immediate past tense: very recent past tense, e.g., in the last minute or two
Recent past tense: in the last few days/weeks/months (exact definition varies)
Remote past tense: more than a few days/weeks/months ago (exact definition varies)
Nonrecent past tense: not recent past tense, contrasting with recent past tense
Nonremote past tense: not remote past tense, contrasting with remote past tense
Prehesternal past tense: before hesternal past tense
Prehodiernal past tense: before hodiernal past tense
Preterite: past, conceived as a whole
Present tense
Still tense: indicates a situation held to be the case, at or immediately before the utterance
Absolute-relative tenses
future perfect tense: by some time in the future, before some time in the future
future-in-future tense: at some time in the future, will still be in the future
future-in-past tense: at some time in the past, will be in the future
future-perfect-in-past tense: by some time which is in the future of some time in the past, e.g., Sally went to work; by the time she should be home, the burglary would have been completed.
past perfect tense: at some time in the past, was already in the past