Passes

How to spell passes

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce passes

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does passes mean?

1. verbThird-person singular present of pass: moves past, hands over, or succeeds at something.
2. nounMore than one pass: permits, tickets, or narrow routes through mountains.

Passes in a sentence

• verb

  The express train passes our station without stopping.

• noun

  The mountain passes stay closed under heavy snow until spring.

• verb

  She always passes the report to her manager before noon.

• noun

  Staff collect their security passes from the front desk each morning.

Where does passes come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This is the inflected form of 'pass', which entered English in the 1200s from the Old French verb 'passer', meaning 'to go by' or 'to cross over'. That French word grew out of Vulgar Latin 'passare', itself built on the Latin noun 'passus', which literally meant 'a step' or 'a pace', the distance covered by one stride of the foot. From the idea of stepping along came all the modern threads: moving past something, handing an object along, succeeding in a test, and the noun for a narrow route through mountains. The double 's' in the spelling simply carries straight over from 'pass', and the '-es' is the regular ending English adds after a hissing 's' sound, so the word ends in three letters that all owe their existence to the same sound. The same Latin 'passus' also lies behind 'pace' and 'passage', which is a useful reminder of why the spelling stays doubled.

How the word is built

• pass (from Latin passus: a step, pace)
• -es (third-person singular verb / plural noun ending)