Word.ws English Dictionary

en passants

en passants is the plural of en passant.

Meaning of en passant

Noun

en passant (plural en passants)

  1. A move in which a pawn captures an opposing pawn on the same rank immediately after the latter has moved forward two squares on its first move in the game, as if it had moved forward only one square.
    • Spectators are privy to awe inspiring castles, baffling forks, and breathtaking en passants.1998 December 11, Glenn Kaplan, “Chess: not just for losers, but also Trekkies”, in The Oberlin Review, volume 127, number 12, Oberlin, Oh.: The Union Library Association, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from...

See all 4 meanings of en passant

Questions about en passants

What is en passants the plural of?
En passants is the plural of en passant.

Words near en passants in the dictionary

  1. en mass
  2. en masse
  3. en pantoufles
  4. en papillote
  5. en passant
  6. en passants
  7. en pied
  8. en plein
  9. en plein air
  10. en pointe
  11. en prise

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: en passants (page history and authors); en passant (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “en passants.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/en_passants. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.