Word.ws English Dictionary

pass the river

pass the river verb: to die.

Verb

pass the river (third-person singular simple present passes the river, present participle passing the river, simple past and past participle passed the river)

  1. (euphemistic, idiomatic) To die.
    • To the beautiful memory of Kenneth Grahame, husband of Elspeth and father of Alastair, who passed the river on the 6th of July, 1932, leaving childhood and literature through him the more blest for all time.1991, Anthony Hope, edited by Humphrey Carpenter and Mari Prichard, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pages 216–219
    Synonyms:
    die

Synonyms of pass the river

Forms of pass the river

third-person singular presentpasses the river
present participlepassing the river
past participlepassed the river
pastpassed the river

Origin of pass the river

Allusion to the crossing of the river Styx, the boundary between life and Hades, in Classical Greek mythology.

Questions about pass the river

What does pass the river mean?
Pass the river means to die.
What part of speech is pass the river?
Pass the river is a verb.
What is the past tense of pass the river?
The past tense of pass the river is passed the river.

Words near pass the river in the dictionary

  1. pass the hat
  2. pass the mantle
  3. pass the parcel
  4. pass the phone
  5. pass the pikes
  6. pass the river
  7. pass the sponge across the slate
  8. pass the sponge over the slate
  9. pass the time
  10. pass the time of day
  11. pass the torch

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pass the river (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-pass the river.ogg.

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