Passed or past?
passed is an adjective meaning “That has passed beyond a certain point (chiefly in set collocations)”; past is a noun meaning “The period of time that has already happened, in contrast to the present and…”. Use passed as an adjective and past as a noun (past is also an adjective: “Having already happened; in the past; finished”). They sound the same (/pɑːst/). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) past is about 2.8 times as common as passed.
What is the difference between passed and past?
| passed | past | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | adjective, verb | noun, adjective, adverb, preposition |
| Meaning | That has passed beyond a certain point (chiefly in set collocations) That has passed a given qualification or examination; qualified | The period of time that has already happened, in contrast to the present and the future The past tense Having already happened; in the past; finished |
| Example | none recorded | a book about a time machine that can transport people back into the past |
| Forms | none | pasts |
| Pronunciation | /pɑːst/ /pæst/ | /pɑːst/ /past/ /pæst/ |
| In writing | 83 times per million words | 229 times per million words |
Sources: passed and past in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of passed and past
passed
- 1
That has passed beyond a certain point (chiefly in set collocations)
- 2
That has passed a given qualification or examination; qualified
past
- 1
The period of time that has already happened, in contrast to the present and the future
a book about a time machine that can transport people back into the past
- 2
Having already happened; in the past; finished
past glories
- 3
In a direction that passes
I watched him walk past
- 4
Beyond in place or quantity
the room past mine
- 5
The past tense
- 6
Following expressions of time to indicate how long ago something happened; ago
- 7
Any number of minutes after the last hour
What's the time? - It's now quarter past twelve midday (or 12.15pm) -O,K., we'll stop at half (past) twelve
- 8
Of a period of time: having just gone by; previous
during the past year
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, passed or past?
passed appears 83 times per million words; past 229 times per million words.
passed 83 times per million wordspast 229 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search passed vs past?
“passed vs past” is searched about 14,800 times a month on Google and 640 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“past vs passed”, “passed or past”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.