Preterite

The preterite is a simple past tense form generally expressing an action as being 'delimited' in time. (In contrast, the imperfect generally expresses an 'non-delimited' event or state.) The Spanish preterite is often the equivalent to English simpe past tense forms such as did, hit, decided, said etc.

-ar verbs

In written Spanish, many common preterite forms are third person singular ("he/she/it") forms of -ar verbs. These forms end in -ó:

Other verbs

Other verbs can have various irregularities in the preterite, such as vowel changes in the stem and a variety of endings. Common irregular, preterite forms include fue from ser ("he/she/it was") and estar (estuvo).