Definition of "pass"

To change place.

1. (intransitive) To move or be moved from one place to another.  examples

2. (transitive) To go past, by, over, or through; to proceed from one side to the other of; to move past.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • We expressed our readiness, and in ten minutes were in the station wagon, rolling rapidly down the long drive, for it was then after nine. We passed on the way the van of the guests from Asquith.

     1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter V, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.

   • The dinghy was trailing astern at the end of its painter, and Merrion looked at it as he passed. He saw that it was a battered-looking affair of the prahm type, with a blunt snout, and like the parent ship, had recently been painted a vivid green.

     1944, Miles Burton, chapter 5, in The Three Corpse Trick

3. (ditransitive) To cause to move or go; to send; to transfer from one person, place, or condition to another.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • I had only time to pass my eye over the medals.

     1705, J[oseph] Addison, Remarks on Several Parts of Italy, &c. in the Years 1701, 1702, 1703, London: […] Jacob Tonson, […]

   • Waller […] passed over five thousand horse and foot by Newbridge.

     1702–1704, Edward [Hyde, 1st] Earl of Clarendon, “(please specify |book=I to XVI)”, in The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, Begun in the Year 1641. […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Printed at the Theater, published 1707

4. (intransitive, transitive, medicine) To eliminate (something) from the body by natural processes.  examples

5. (transitive, nautical) To take a turn with (a line, gasket, etc.), as around a sail in furling, and make secure.  examples

6. (sports) To make various kinds of movement.

   1. (transitive, soccer) To kick (the ball) with precision rather than at full force.  quotations  examples

      Quotations

      • Iaquinta passes it coolly into the right-hand corner as Paston dives the other way.

        20 June 2010, The Guardian, Rob Smyth

   2. (transitive) To move (the ball or puck) to a teammate.  quotations  examples

      Quotations

      • Brady passed the ball to nine different receivers and handed it off to seven.

        2017 September 18, Nicole Yang, “What you need to know about the Patriots’ big win — and their next opponent”, in Boston Globe‎

   3. (intransitive, fencing) To make a lunge or swipe.  examples

   4. (intransitive, American football) To throw the ball, generally downfield, towards a teammate.  examples

7. (intransitive) To go from one person to another.  examples

8. (transitive) To put in circulation; to give currency to.  examples

9. (transitive) To cause to obtain entrance, admission, or conveyance.  examples

10. (transitive, cooking) To put through a sieve.  examples

To change in state or status

1. (intransitive) To progress from one state to another; to advance.  examples

2. (intransitive) To depart, to cease, to come to an end.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • Beauty's a charm, but soon the charm will pass.

     1697, Virgil, “Pastoral 2”, in John Dryden, transl., The Works of Virgil: Containing His Pastorals, Georgics, and Æneis. […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […]

   • The slightest effort made the patient cough. He would stand leaning on a stick and holding a hand to his side, and when the paroxysm had passed it left him shaking.

     1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company

   • The crisis passed as she'd prayed it would, but it remained to be seen just how much damage had been done.

     1995, Penny Richards, The Greatest Gift of All

3. (intransitive) To die.  examples

4. (intransitive, transitive) To achieve a successful outcome from.  examples

5. (intransitive, transitive) To advance through all the steps or stages necessary to become valid or effective; to obtain the formal sanction of (a legislative body).  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • But was it responsible governance to pass the Longitude Act without other efforts to protect British seamen? Or might it have been subterfuge—a disingenuous attempt to shift attention away from the realities of their life at sea.

     2012 March, William E. Carter, Merri Sue Carter, “The British Longitude Act Reconsidered”, in American Scientist, volume 100, number 2, page 87

6. (intransitive, law) To be conveyed or transferred by will, deed, or other instrument of conveyance.  examples

7. (transitive) To cause to advance by stages of progress; to carry on with success through an ordeal, examination, or action; specifically, to give legal or official sanction to; to ratify; to enact; to approve as valid and just.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • Pass the happy news.

     1855, Alfred Tennyson, “(please specify the page number(s))”, in Maud, and Other Poems, London: Edward Moxon, […]

8. (intransitive, law) To make a judgment on or upon a person or case.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • And within three dayes twelve knyghtes passed uppon hem; and they founde Sir Palomydes gylty, and Sir Saphir nat gylty, of the lordis deth.

     1485, Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, Book X

9. (transitive) To utter; to pronounce; to pledge.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • I may almost depend on your own justice, and leave it to yourself to pass sentence on your own conduct

     1749, Henry Fielding, chapter XII, in The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], book XIX

   • Father, thy word is passed.

     1667, John Milton, “(please specify the book number)”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], […]; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873,

10. (intransitive) To change from one state to another (without the implication of progression).  quotations  examples

    Quotations

    • And rising out of the fourth stage of deep meditation he entered into the state of mind to which the infinity of space is alone present. And passing out of the mere consciousness of the infinity of space he entered into the state of mind to which the infinity of though is along present.

      1881, Buddhist Suttas, page 115

    • Rather, he argues that 'within the zero-stage, all special affections have passed over into a general undifferentiated affection; all special consciousnesses have passed over into the one, general, persistently available background-consciousness of our past, the consciousness of the completely unarticulated, completely indistinct horizon of the past, which brings to a close the living, moving retentional past.'

      2010, Joaquim Siles i Borràs, The Ethics of Husserl's Phenomenology, page 158

    • What we call 'our' minds are events beginning with birth and ending with death, each again broken up into other events or mental states, into and out of which we are perpetually passing.

      2011, Thomas Hill Green, R. L. Nettleship, Works of Thomas Hill Green, page lxxviii

To move through time.

1. (intransitive, of time) To elapse, to be spent.  examples

2. (transitive, of time) To spend.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • To pass commodiously this life.

     1667, John Milton, Paradise Lost

   • Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent, miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.

     1913, Mrs. [Marie] Belloc Lowndes, chapter I, in The Lodger, London: Methuen; republished in Novels of Mystery: The Lodger; The Story of Ivy; What Really Happened, New York, N.Y.: Longmans, Green and Co., […], page 0056

   • For, although Allan had passed his fiftieth year, […] , one had continued to think of him as a man of whipcord and iron, a natural source of untiring energy, a mechanism that would not wear out.

     1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company

3. (transitive) To go by without noticing; to omit attention to; to take no note of; to disregard.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • Please you that I may pass / This doing.

     c. 1608–1609 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedy of Coriolanus”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act II, scene ii]

   • I pass their warlike pomp, their proud array.

     1700, [John] Dryden, “Palamon and Arcite: Or, The Knight’s Tale. In Three Books.”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […]

4. (intransitive) To continue.  examples

5. (intransitive) To proceed without hindrance or opposition.  examples

6. (transitive) To live through; to have experience of; to undergo; to suffer.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • Please you that I may pass / This doing.

     c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Othello, the Moore of Venice”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act I, scene iii]

7. (intransitive) To happen.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • […] for the memory of what passed while at that place is almost blank.

     1876, The Dilemma, Chapter LIII, republished in Littell's Living Age, series 5, volume 14, page 274

To be accepted.

1. (intransitive, stative) To be tolerated as a substitute for something else, to "do".  examples

2. (intransitive, stative, sociology) To be accepted by others as a member of a race, sex, or other group to which one does not belong or would not have originally appeared to belong; especially to be considered white although one has black ancestry, or a woman although one was assigned male at birth or vice versa.  quotations

   Quotations

   • Chinese sometimes pass for Europeans, but Japs more often approach Western types.

     1941 December 22, “How to Tell Japs from the Chinese”, in LIFE, page 81

   • […] a situation where I had to know whether I could pass as a woman, and not tell anyone, and not be asked what I was doing dressed as a woman.

     1999, Irene Preiss, Fixed for Life: The True Saga of How Tom Became Sally, page 249

   • Like Olivia's aunts (described above), many Americans passed as white to resist the racially restrictive one-drop rule and the racial status quo of the Jim Crow era (Daniel 2002; Williamson 1980).

     2010 December, Nikki Khanna, Cathryn Johnson, “Passing as Black: Racial Identity Work among Biracial Americans”, in Social Psychology Quarterly, volume 73, number 4

To refrain from doing something.

1. (intransitive) To decline something that is offered or available.  examples

2. (transitive) To reject; to pass up.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • Instead, the board voted to suspend the dividend, giving Orton his way at last. They passed the dividend again in June 1870 […]

     2013, Joshua D. Wolff, Western Union and the Creation of the American Corporate Order, 1845-1893, page 187

3. (intransitive) To decline or not attempt to answer a question.  examples

4. (intransitive) In turn-based games, to decline to play in one's turn.  examples

5. (intransitive, card games) In euchre, to decline to make the trump.  examples

To do or be better.

1. (intransitive, obsolete) To go beyond bounds; to surpass; to be in excess.  quotations

   Quotations

   • This passes, Master Ford.

     c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene ii]

2. (transitive) To transcend; to surpass; to excel; to exceed.  quotations  examples

   Quotations

   • And striue to passe […] Their natiue musicke by her skilfull art:

     1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, stanza 25

   • Whose tender power Passes the strength of storms in their most desolate hour.

     1812–1818, Lord Byron, “Canto C”, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. , London: John Murray,, (please specify the stanza number)

(intransitive, obsolete) To take heed, to have an interest, to care.  quotations

An opening, road, or track, available for passing; especially, one through or over some dangerous or otherwise impracticable barrier such as a mountain range; a passageway; a defile; a ford.  quotations  examples

A channel connecting a river or body of water to the sea, for example at the mouth (delta) of a river.  examples

A single movement, especially of a hand, at, over, or along anything.  quotations  examples

A single passage of a tool over something, or of something over a tool.  examples

An attempt.  examples

Success in an examination or similar test.  examples

(fencing) A thrust or push; an attempt to stab or strike an adversary.  examples

(figuratively) A thrust; a sally of wit.  examples

A sexual advance.  examples

(sports) The act of moving the ball or puck from one player to another.  examples

(rail transport) A passing of two trains in the same direction on a single track, when one is put into a siding to let the other overtake it.  examples

Permission or license to pass, or to go and come.  quotations  examples

A document granting permission to pass or to go and come; a passport; a ticket permitting free transit or admission  examples

(baseball) An intentional walk.  examples

(sports) The act of overtaking; an overtaking manoeuvre.  quotations  examples

The state of things; condition; predicament; impasse.  quotations  examples

(obsolete) Estimation; character.  quotations

(cooking) The area in a restaurant kitchen where the finished dishes are passed from the chefs to the waiting staff.  quotations  examples

An act of declining to play one's turn in a game, often by saying the word "pass".  examples

(computing) A run through a document as part of a translation, compilation or reformatting process.  examples

(computing, slang) A password (especially one for a restricted-access website).  quotations