Word.ws English Dictionary

passing away

passing away is the present participle and gerund of pass away.

Meaning of pass away

Verb

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

  1. (euphemistic, idiomatic) To die.
    • After a long battle with cancer, the professor passed away yesterday.
  2. (archaic, literary) To disappear; to cease to be; to be no more.
    • Returne with ſpeed, time paſſeth ſwift away,
      Our life is fraile, and we may dye to day.c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC...
  3. (obsolete) To spend; to waste.
    • Lest she pass away the flower of her age.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Wisdom of Sirach of Sirach-Chapter-42/#9 42:9

Questions about passing away

What is passing away the present participle and gerund of?
Passing away is the present participle and gerund of pass away.

Words near passing away in the dictionary

  1. passing a stool
  2. passing along
  3. passing around
  4. passing around like a blunt
  5. passing as
  6. passing away
  7. passing bell
  8. passing bells
  9. passing by
  10. passing current
  11. passing down

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: passing away (page history and authors); pass away (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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Cite this entry: “passing away.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/passing_away. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.