I first encountered it in the Genki textbook where it was placed in brackets next to (ごちそうさま) aka thank you for the meal after eating. I was confused why “でした” was in brackets off to the side so I asked a tandem app friend to explain and they did a pretty good job but I went online to clarify and pretty much every dictionary didn’t really explain it and most would say it doesn’t exist but then list it in example sentences???
The best I could find was this: [https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/deshita/](https://www.tofugu.com/japanese-grammar/deshita/)
So if “だった” is a dictionary worthy word why not “でした”?
If I am just blind and stupid please link me the place where I should be searching to find this stuff. But even then I would still be curious why something like Jisho and its equivalents wouldn’t at least explain it.
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でした is just the past tense of です. I can’t explain why some books don’t go over it, but that’s really all it is.
だ -> だった. です -> でした
It’s the past tense form of です. Maybe the reason you aren’t finding it in dictionaries is because it’s a conjugation and not a base form.
Keep reading genki and you will get those questions answered.
> every dictionary didn’t really explain it
If you click “show inflections” at jisho.org it will show you the tenses. Give it a shot.
The reason why you aren’t finding it in dictionaries is because it’s not really a word. If you’re using Genki it’s explained in lesson 4.
でした is not a word by itself, it’s the past tense of です. That’s all there’s to it.