I come across this in todays New Yorker:
Birkenstocks, like an iPad, or an eight-dollar bottle of cold-pressed juice, are the covetable answer to a need that hadn’t existed before they came along.
Isn't this just a past tense and shouldn't be written as: Didn't existed ? Would that be wrong?
There isn't such a thing as "Didn't existed". Past tense would be: "Didn't exist".
Example: It didn't exist yesterday.
If something was done in the past before another event happened, then the correct form would be: "Hadn't existed"
Example: It hadn't existed before they came along. But then they came along and put it into existence.
:)
The negative past tense it's made with didn't + base form, where the base form is the infinitive without to. The past perfect is used when an action or event happened before than other action in the past.
I was hungry because I hadn't eaten anything.
