Loading page
say it: PAS-ing
passing is a noun, adjective and adverb meaning "(American football) a play that involves one player throwing the ball to a teammate". It is pronounced /ˈpæsɪŋ/ — PAS-ing. It carries 12 recorded senses.
(American football) a play that involves one player throwing the ball to a teammate
“the coach sent in a passing play on third and long”
American football
going by something that is moving in order to get in front of it
“she drove but well but her reckless passing of every car on the road frightened me”
success in satisfying a test or requirement
“his future depended on his passing that test”
“he got a pass in introductory chemistry”
lasting a very short time
“the ephemeral joys of childhood”
“a passing fancy”
“youth's transient beauty”
“love is transitory but it is eternal”
“fugacious blossoms”
allowing you to pass (e.g., an examination or inspection) satisfactorily
“a passing grade”
hasty and without attention to detail; not thorough
“a casual (or cursory) inspection failed to reveal the house's structural flaws”
“a passing glance”
“perfunctory courtesy”
“In his paper, he showed a very superficial understanding of psychoanalytic theory”
to an extraordinary degree
“she was a surpassingly beautiful woman”
“I will mention only one particular aspect of the current mess because ... this one is surely something new and passing strange”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for passing come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.