Other forms: passed, passing, passes
Pass is one of the busiest verbs in English and its senses fan out from one picture: moving by something. You pass a shop, time passes, a car passes you on the hill.
From that come the everyday uses a learner needs early. Hand over: pass me the salt. Succeed in a test: she passed her driving test. Decline a turn: I'll pass, thanks. Approve a law: parliament passed the bill. And, gently, to die: he passed away last spring. The noun is just as busy — a bus pass, a mountain pass, a pass in football — and none of those senses will help you guess the others. Note the spelling of the past: passed is the verb, past is everything else.
1verbpassTo go by or beyond something.~2%
“We passed three petrol stations and stopped at none of them.”
synonyms: go by, overtake
2verbhandTo hand something to somebody.~2%
“Could you pass the map?”
3verbsucceedTo succeed in a test or an examination.~28%
“He passed with two marks to spare.”
4verbtimeOf time, to go by.~2%
“The afternoon passed slowly.”
5nouncardA card or document allowing you in or through.~10%
“Your pass will not work at the side entrance.”
6nounrouteA route through mountains.~56%
“The pass is closed from November.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 16 sentences found in the wild and placed 10 of them on a sense (6 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
pass is a way of moving by.
Latin passus was a step or a pace — the distance covered by one stride, and the unit the Romans measured their roads in. A thousand of them made a mile, mille passus. Every modern sense of pass is still that step: going by, handing on, getting through.
Middle English
passen
English, today
pass
From Middle English passen. From Middle English passen, from Old French passer (“to step, walk, pass”), from Vulgar Latin passo (“step, walk, pass”), derived from Latin passus (“a step”), from Proto-Italic pattus, from Proto-Indo-European peth₂- (“to spread, stretch out”). Cognate with Old English fæþm (“armful, fathom”). More at fathom. Displaced native genġan.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA