Choosing between Passed and Past

You may have seen people mix up passed and past, since they sound similar when spoken aloud. Here’s a breakdown of how both words are intended to be used.

Passed is the past tense of the verb pass, which can have many meanings, but generally you can think of it having a meaning related to movement, progression, or even success or approval.

Valerie passed the convenience store on her way to the dentist’s office.

Time passed slowly while Michael waited for the phone call.

Will studied all weekend and easily passed the test.

Past has meanings related to movement too, but it can also refer to something happening at an earlier point in time. A key difference between passed and past, which can help you decide when to use each word, is that past cannot be used as a verb. Past can only be an adjective, adverb, preposition, or noun. (For in-depth descriptions and examples of those parts of speech, see our posts on adjectives and adverbs, prepositions, nouns, and verbs.) Here are examples of past used as those parts of speech:

Adjective

Aaron went to the amusement park ten times over the past two years.

Preposition

Calvin walked past the football field to get to the school.

Noun

While looking at the beautiful scenery, Jill was reminded of a painting she saw in the past.

Adverb

The birds flew past and disappeared into the bushes.

Here’s a sentence that uses both passed and past correctly:

Ely usually passed the small stream on his daily run, but that morning he decided to run past the apple orchard instead.

In the sentence, passed is used as a verb—it’s the action that Ely is taking—and past is used as preposition later to describe the orientation of Ely’s running near the apple orchard.