What is the difference between "passed" and "past"?

I passed her the bowl.

That was in the past.

In the sentence you asked about, I’m pretty sure it’s We are past the days.
Gail?

@rangerr

I understand the difference between “passed” as a verb and “past”. I’m talking about “passed” as an adjective.

We are past the days….
I can tell you what it is. Jeruba can tell you why. She rocks.

To pass is the verb form. The past is the noun form.

@dpworkin

But “passed” and “past” also both function as adjectives.

Passed (adj) – “having completed the act of passing.”

I passed a fart.
My fart is in the past.

The gentleman seated to my left passed wind. I immediately passed judgement on him as he was guilty of emitting such aromas in the past.

gone are the days when we…
the time has passed for having the good times. . .
the memories of good times are all in the past now

In your own sample sentence, past would be the fit.

@DominicX Yes, but each relates to the previous form.

@dpworkin

So which one would it be in my example?

Couldn’t one argue that we “passed” those times and that they are now in the “past”? That’s why I can’t decide which one is right.

we are past/passed the days when we

We are past the point…
We have passed the joint point…

Good question. You’ve got me. It’s one of those insidious English conundra. Maybe we should ask @Jeurba.

In the past five minutes, seven cars have passed me.

Why is everyone repeating completely unhelpful examples?

I’d say past is the word you would use here. Passed is actually not really an adjective; it’s the past participial form of the verb to pass.

Side note: Etymologically speaking, I have a hunch that passed is to past as dreamed is to dreamt – a regular and irregular past tense form. So once they were both verb participles, but nowadays past has fossilised into an adjective, and its usage as a participle looks archaic to us.

Actually, past and passed have nothing in common with dreamed and dreamt. Just sayin’.

Is it just me, or are there a lot of people answering without reading the details?

I’m pretty sure you want to use past in this case. That is the word I have always seen used in text books for that type of sentence. Of course, the textbook writers could have been incorrect. :(

@Fyrius

Past was the word I decided to use because it “felt” right to me. I just wasn’t sure why. I was mislead by the dictionary describing “passed” as an adjective and as the past tense of “pass”. Although it derives from a verbal adjective (and was not certainly not being used as a participle in this sentence), I assumed it had become a full-fledged adjective itself.

@davidbetterman
I’m getting a bit tired of plain assertions with no explanations, arguments or proof posted by you. Could you please stop asking everyone to take your word for it on things we have no reason to grant you any authority on?

Who is this we, and I am not asking you to take anything. it is you who mistakenly eqauted past and passed with dream and dreamt. @Fyrius

You can always PM me your frustrations at being wrong instead of airing them here!

@DominicX http://www.dailywritingtips.com/passed-vs-past/

@DominicX
Hm. Well, it’s possible that it’s also an adjective… I’m not familiar with that usage, and neither is the dictionary I use, but both of us can be wrong about that.
At any rate, past is definitely an adjective (among other things). Given the choice I’d pick that one just to be safe.

Incidentally, in the sentence “we are past the days when…”, past is not used as an adjective, but as a preposition. Compare it to “we are difficult the days” and “we are over the days”.

@davidbetterman
I’m going to stop listening to you now.

I’ve always seen this as a spacetime thing, although not because I was ever taught it that way but because it helps me make sense of these (pseudo-) adjectivals. It’s an interesting question.

Look at what the difference would be if it were Remembrance of Things Passed, instead of Remembrance of Things Past. The former implies something spatial. For all we know by looking at this title, Proust is going to tell us about the objects that he walks by everyday on his way to work or something. But the latter title is pretty obviously about time, not space. Things past in a temporal sense, not passed in a spatial sense.

But really I am just making this up, and fuck if I know. Because we also say “He walked past me,” which is obviously totally spatial but still uses past. And yet, reading the sentence, “He walked passed me,” reveals the sort of redundancy that exists in both sentences.

The thing I think is that the word originally connoted temporality only, although I could be wrong on that.

@Fyrius: I would ignore @davidbetterman because as far as I can gloss within the OED passed is just a variety of past and they both obviously come from pass and I don’t see why this can’t be analagous to dream and dreamt and dreamed, as you indicated, and actually I thought that was a pretty good idea, and I’m just letting you know, and don’t listen to that guy.

@absalom Thanks for your analysis about temporality. That was my first thought, and it is a little confusing that there seem to be exceptions, but English is a confusing tongue.

@Fyrius I haven’t spoken a word. How can you stop listening?

@absalom
“The thing I think is that the word originally connoted temporality only, although I could be wrong on that.”
Maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe originally past was only used in a spatial movement sense, which would then be used metaphorically to indicate time as well; the past is that which has “passed us by”, so to speak. And in time it turned into a dead metaphor.

To answer your original example,I would say “we are past the days when we… ,” Past in this sense being an adverb.

WOW… 2 self-proclaimed linguists admits being unsure of their thoughts on this matter . . . but yet one continues to preach as expert after stating how he can be wrong about it too.

@Fyrius

Actually I was referring to the word pass, but I was just speculating and after looking at the OED again see that I was probably wrong.

You are correct about past being originally spatial, though, or a perfect tense of a verb of motion (pass):

“In branch A. I. originally the perfect tense of PASS v. (compare sense 11b s.v.), formed, as in other verbs of motion, with be instead of have (compare BE v. 16b); the perfect is attested slightly earlier than other tenses of the verb in this use.”

@njnyjobs

What are you even talking about?

The more information, the better. I don’t care if people are unsure about it; the more information put forth, the better.

@DominicX

“we are past/passed the days when we…”

In the above example you could say either, “We are past the days….” or “We have passed the days….”.

In my former example I think past is a preposition because it’s stating a temporal position, such as “We are on time”.

In the latter one passed serves as a verb.

An adjective form of passed could be, “A ball that gets by the catcher is a passed ball.”

What’s passed is past.

@erichw1504

What’s past is also passed.

What’s dreamed has been dreamt.

If we are passed by the fast we will still exist in the present and not be confined by the past.

@erichw1504

What’s glossed was glozed.

What’s lurving is lurved.

what’s passed should be flushed (or fanned if in a gaseous state)

Don’t forget that you’re not just dealing with a verb and a noun: “to pass” and “the past”, but your verb has several tenses… and a participle.

Present tense: to pass
Past tense: passed (did pass)
Participle: have / had / has passed

I pass cars on the road all day. Present tense
I passed cars yesterday. Past tense
I have passed cars since I started driving. Present participle
I had passed cars until Smokey took my license away last year. Past participle

In this case, the participle form is the same (appearance-wise) as the past tense, but this isn’t always the case. Consider drink / drank / drunk, for example, or sink / sank / sunk:

The boat sinks.
The boat sank.
The boat has sunk.

It’s not at all a stupid question. I wish that more would question (and take some guidance on) their use of our amazing language.

In the sentence “we are past the days when…” (which is correct, by the way) I believe that “past” is an adverb, not an adjective, modifying the verb “are”.

I’m so confused. I’ll let the linguists sort this one out, and I hope you will all forgive me if and when I get it wrong.

LOL @wilma‘s comment . . .

@CyanoticWasp
I think it’s a preposition.

Try replacing it with (other) adverbs. You’d get a grammatically incorrect sentence.
*We are probably the days when…
*We are gladly the days when…
*We are quickly the days when…

On the other hand, when you replace it with (other) prepositions, you’d get a fine sentence.
We are in the days when…
We are between the days when…
We are above the days when…

I think that shows that past here is in a preposition slot, not in an adjective slot. Only prepositions fit in that position.

I think I’m sure you’re right, @Fyrius. Thanks for the correction.

Beats the hell out of me, but this thread is pretty funny.

I’m glad I’m not the only one who had trouble with this. I was embarrassed to admit my confusion before; I don’t mind so much now.

@davidbetterman The link you provided is very useful in explaining the various correct uses of “past” and “passed.”

I think it has been a long time since many of us have considered issued such as “part of speech” and what is modified by a particular word in a given sentence.

I believe clarity of thought is intimately related to our ability to read and write our language well. It is a discipline which, when disregarded, results in sloppy reasoning.

The “Past” is a reference to a specific point in time during temporal progression. Where as “passed” is a verb used to describe movement through space and time. However both words do often get confused. In your sentence above, I would use “passed”. Rather than being in the “past”, they are “passed” the day’s.

@Dr_Lawrence It has been a long time since 6th grade when we used to tear apart sentences and put all the words on stilts and the like to show them as subject, verb, object and the various modifiers…I don’t even remember what that was called, but I m sure it had a name.

Syntactic trees or sentence diagrams.

@dpworkin

I’m just glad I asked such a thought-provoking question. :)

AND I HATE SYNTACTIC TREES. No offense @Fyrius. :)

@dpworkin Ah yes. Thanks. It is all coming back to me now. Parsing sentences on the stilts. It was always a lot of fun.

I wuv syntactic trees. XD

I didn’t know there existed places where people actually learn about syntax trees in high school. I only got to know them in my first year as a linguistics bachelor student.

Without consulting a dictionary, I see past as being used in three ways:
noun – He lived in the past.
adjective – The past year has been a rough one.
preposition – It is one block past the traffic light.

passed is a verb and can only be used as an adjective when it is used as a past participle. I can’t think of any way of using it like this that does not sound awkward.
The passed ball fell to the ground.

I know it as a descriptor for something old, worn out or spoiled: “Don’t eat that banana. It is passed.” translates in local dialect as “Doh eat dat banana, it pass.”

This gibberish is making me pist.

Would pist be the past participle of past?
Oh I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it.

How come I almost always know the right answer to a grammar question but get so confuzzled by the discussions? I’ve got to stop reading these threads!

@janbb The Force is drawing you in. Beware of The Conspiracy.

@Lightning The warning came too late!

I PASSED gas out of my ass,now my underwear is a thing of the PAST

passed is a verb i’m guessing PAST is an adjective or noun?

We are past the time when we…
We have passed the time when we…

The correct one is “We are past the days when we were young.” The word “passed” is used as a verb alone, without the accompanying word “are” in a sentence like “We passed by the gas station on our way home.” You can never use “passed” with the conjunction “are” in sentences, thus “We are passed the days when we were young” is grammatically incorrect.

@MRSHINYSHOES you weren’t doing too badly until you called “are” a conjunction. It’s a verb; present tense of “to be”.

I am; you are; he/she/it is; we/you/they are. ==> present tense

Passed is both past tense and past/present participle of the verb “to pass”.

I/you/he/she/it passed; we/you/they passed. ==> past tense
I/you/he/she/it has passed; we/you/they have passed. ==> present participle
I/you/he/she/it had passed; we/you/they had passed. ==> past participle

@CyanoticWasp——-Lol——oops! Well, I suppose even former English Honors graduates are human too. ;)

@DominicX “Past” is never an adjective and you would never use “passed” in this sentence.

“But in the sentence “we are past/passed the days when we…”, would it be “past” or “passed”? Or does it not matter?”

@plethora

Wha?

“Past” is often an adjective. “This past year, I went to Florida”. In that sentence, “past” is an adjective.

@DominicX Well, there ya go. Just checking to keep you on your toes….:)

I think @MRSHINYSHOES said “conjunction” while he meant “copula”.

I love to see dogs having an intelligent discussion.

I would just as soon not see dogs copulate in Fluther, however.

Trust you to always go there, CW.