Future tense
grammatical tense
In grammar, a future tense (abbreviated fut) is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French achètera, meaning "will buy", derived from the verb acheter ("to buy"). The "future" expressed by the future tense usually means the future relative to the moment of speaking, although in contexts where relative tense is used it may mean the future relative to some other point in time under consideration.
English does not have an inflectional future tense, though it has a variety of grammatical and lexical means for expressing future-related meanings. These include modal auxiliaries such as will and shall as well as the futurate present tense.
Tenseless languages use context, lexical items, aspect and/or mood to indicate time.
Expressions
The nature of the future, necessarily uncertain and at varying distances ahead, means that the speaker may refer to future events with the modality either of probability (what the speaker expects to happen) or intent (what the speaker plans to make happen). Whether future expression is realis or irrealis depends not so much on an objective ontological notion of future reality, but rather on the degree of the speaker's conviction that the event will in fact come about.
In many languages there is no grammatical (morphological or syntactic) indication of future tense. Future meaning is supplied by the context, with the use of temporal adverbs such as "later", "next year", etc.
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