Word.ws English Dictionary

passe

passe is the alternative spelling of passé.

passe is the obsolete spelling of pass.

Meaning of passé

Adjective

passé (comparative more passé, superlative most passé)

  1. (colloquial) Dated; out of style; old-fashioned.
    • Mary felt annoyed at the girl; just because bras had become passé, did a girl with so pronounced a bosom have to cater to fashion? In this case practicality dictated a bra, and Mary stood at the desk feeling herself flushing with disapproval.1964, Philip K. Dick, “FOUR”, in Clans of the Alphane Moon, United States: Ace Books, →OCLC; republished London: HarperCollinsPublishers, 1996, →ISBN, page 27
  2. Past one's prime; worn; faded.
    • The coaching stock is in general in a very passé condition, but the ex-royal saloon, though needing a coat of paint outside, as another photograph shows, is spotless inside.1939 November, “Pertinent Paragraphs: The Shropshire & Montgomeryshire Light Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 357
    Synonyms:
    raddled

See all 3 meanings of passé

Meaning of pass

Verb

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

  1. (intransitive) To move or be moved from one place to another.
    • They passed from room to room.
    Synonyms:
    go, move
  2. (transitive) To go past, by, over, or through; to proceed from one side to the other of; to move past.
    • You will pass a house on your right.
  3. (ditransitive) To cause to move or go; to send; to transfer from one person, place, or condition to another.
    • The waiter passed biscuits and cheese.
  4. (intransitive, transitive) To eliminate (something) from the body by natural processes.
    • He was passing blood in both his urine and his stool.
    Synonyms:
    evacuate, void
  5. (transitive) To take a turn with (a line, gasket, etc.), as around a sail in furling, and make secure.
  6. (transitive) To kick (the ball) with precision rather than at full force.
    • 20 June 2010, The Guardian, Rob Smyth
      Iaquinta passes it coolly into the right-hand corner as Paston dives the other way.

See all 63 meanings of pass

Forms of passe

Adjective
comparativemore passe
superlativemost passe
Verb
third-person singular presentpasses
present participlepassing
past participlepassed
pastpassed

Phrases with passe

Questions about passe

What is passe the alternative spelling of?
Passe is the alternative spelling of passé.

Words near passe in the dictionary

  1. Passchendaele
  2. passcode
  3. passcoded
  4. passcodes
  5. passdown
  6. passe
  7. Passe Crassane
  8. passe garde
  9. passe gardes
  10. passe-dix
  11. passe-garde

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: passe (page history and authors); passé (page history and authors); pass (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: “passe.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/passe. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.