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Questions & Answers about El dólar bajó hoy.
What does bajó mean here, and which verb does it come from?
Bajó is the third-person singular preterite form of bajar, which usually means to go down, to fall, or to decrease.
In this sentence, El dólar bajó hoy, it means that the dollar fell/went down today.
So the basic breakdown is:
- bajar = to go down / to lower / to decrease
- bajó = he/she/it went down or fell
Here, it refers to el dólar.
Why is it bajó and not baja?
Because bajó is in the preterite, which is a past tense.
- baja = it goes down / is going down (present tense, depending on context)
- bajó = it went down / fell (completed past action)
Since the sentence says today but refers to something that already happened, Spanish often uses the preterite to present it as a completed event.
Why is there an accent mark on bajó?