Past tense theft

[ESquared]

I was reading a local community's police log at lunch time (I forgot to bring other media to occupy myself) and saw an interesting phrase in it, repeated several times. Something like:

So-and-so called to report a past-tense theft.

This sounds odd to me. Are we going to start calling a theft in progress a "present-tense theft?" (chortle!) And a theft which is expected to occur is a "future-tense theft?"

"Past tense" describes the conjugation of a verb. It doesn't apply generally to nouns to indicate when they occurred. The word for that is simply "past."

So-and-so called to report a past theft.

But that also has problems, because the term seems to be used to attempt to distinguish reports of thefts that have just been discovered from those discovered some time ago. And by the time the person reports either of those to the police, they are both in the past! So what way would you suggest indicating this other than "past-tense theft?"

And is a term even necessary? Why not simply state when the theft occurred, if it was not reported immediately upon discovery? That would be more accurate and informative.

So-and-so called to report a theft which occurred one week ago.

Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.

 

[SantaMufasa]

The three chronological possibilities for a theft are, as you mentioned, past, present, and future. Insofar as reporting is concerned, the default time frame for a theft report is past:

So-and-so called to report a theft.

(The presumption is a "past theft".)


If, however, the theft is one of the other two (i.e., present, or future) then the reporter would need to qualify as:

So-and-so called to report a theft in progress.

or,

So-and-so called to report a future theft.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
[I provide low-cost, remote Database Administration services: www.dasages.com]

 

[ESquared]

There seem to be actually four possibilities (I wasn't thinking of future at the time). Past thefts, for whatever reason, seem to be subdivided into just-occurred thefts and "past-tense" thefts. I think they're trying to distinguish timely from untimely police reports. I just object to the language they're using.

Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.