This article proposes a short analysis regarding the reference of the term de rupture used to name one of the rather atypical uses of the French past tense the imparfait. The author shows that the aforementioned term shouldn’t be considered as a generic one and describes all uses of the French past tense imparfait in which the receiver is directed to see the process as completed and / or having a different temporal reference. The term de rupture, even if its meaning changes depending on the approach chosen, is specialized as a parameter which enables us to distinct two major values of this unusual use of the imparfait. Actually, the latter is described nowadays most commonly as imparfait narratif and is considered as a carrier of various meaning effects
