Passed

 

Objections have been raised in past days on social media to the euphemism ‘passed’. The Collingwood legend passed last Saturday. This sentence means something quite different from he kicked the ball quickly into the forward line. It means he kicked the bucket. ‘Passed’ appears to be an abbreviation of ‘passed away’ or ‘passed on’ or more flowerily, ‘passed to a better life’, or greener pastures. It is not shorthand for saying he ‘passed the baton’, though this can be appropriate in many cases. Nor ‘passed the buck’, though the intense concentration surrounding a last will and testament could leave you with that impression. When precisely this verb came into present day usage, where, why or how, are questions that elude, requiring the kind of online search for data that could keep us here till our dying day. Life is short and research is long. There are better and more productive ways of passing the time. These objections to ‘passed’ seem to be caused by irritation at not calling a spade a spade. They have crept into daily use and there seems no end to it, if you are an objector. It is unlikely that we will read a notice saying “The Prime Minister with Five Portfolios has popped his clogs,” or “The contentious Governor-General has carked it,” neither statement carrying the dignity expected when speaking of such eminent figures. Replace these verbs with ‘passed’, however, and everything is a bed of roses. Surprisingly, for those whose English extends back into the last century, we have read in recent weeks that the Queen ‘passed’. Vulgarly, we may catch ourselves thinking, I did but see her pass, and yet I love her till I pass. These passing thoughts are more common than we suppose, especially amongst commoners. Or we may ponder if it means she passed with flying colours. This is not in dispute, it must be said. ‘It must be said’ being itself an expression open to query in many contexts. Why must it be said, really? However, it is a common expression and close to a universal truth to say the whole world mourned her passing. Millions went up to the City to witness the fact, while millions more watched at home. It was more than a passing moment for all involved, with complaints from some objectors that it was going on far too long for their liking, as days passed into weeks. Somewhere along the way ‘passed’ has become detached from that collection of euphemisms denoting death as a journey. Instead of conjuring sober thoughts about passing to the other side, whether of the Styx or the Jordan or just in general the river, it prompts the thought that they must have passed out. To have ‘passed on’ does at least suggest that the departed has indeed departed, to introduce another euphemism that has fallen out of favour lately. While ‘passed’ risks being construed as a dysphemism, as on a report card where the teacher reports that the departed “needs to work on their expression”, “hasn’t done all their homework”, but nevertheless “shows sign of improvement”.