Passing

How to spell passing

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce passing

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does passing mean?

1. adjectiveLasting only a short time; brief or momentary.
2. nounThe act of moving a ball to a teammate during a game.

Passing in a sentence

• adjective

  She gave the report only a passing glance before the meeting.

• noun

  The coach praised the team's crisp passing in the second half.

• adjective

  He had a passing interest in photography that faded within months.

• noun

  Accurate passing created several scoring chances for the strikers.

Where does passing come from?

Language of origin: French

The base verb 'pass' came into English in the 1200s from Old French 'passer', which descended from a Vulgar Latin verb 'passare', itself built on the Latin noun 'passus' meaning 'a step' or 'a pace'. The original idea was literally one of treading or stepping forward, the same root that gives us 'pace' and 'passage'. The '-ing' ending, by contrast, is a thoroughly native English suffix of Germanic origin used to turn verbs into participles and verbal nouns, so 'passing' simply fused the borrowed French verb with this homegrown grammatical tail. Over time the participle picked up its own shades of meaning: something fleeting that goes by quickly, the gentle euphemism for someone's death (their 'passing'), and the act of moving a ball in sport. The spelling trap is small but real, since the doubled 's' must be kept before adding '-ing', exactly as in the parent verb 'pass'.

How the word is built

• pass (to move past/go by, from Latin passus 'step, pace')
• -ing (present-participle / gerund suffix)