Past vs Passed | Learn English Vocabulary

want to speak real english from your first lesson sign up for your free lifetime account at englishclass101.com hi everybody my name is alicia in this lesson i'm going to talk about past and past these words can be commonly confused because they have very similar pronunciations but they have different grammatical functions i'm going to talk about maybe some of the most confusing points about these words let's get started okay first i want to look at the word past p-a-s-t so past has a few different parts of speech that it's commonly used in in this lesson i'm going to look at past as an adjective as a noun and as a preposition first let's take a look at how we use past as an adjective so we use past as an adjective meaning it modifies nouns to mean something that happened or existed before the present so a reminder the present is now something past is something that happened before now so yesterday last week last weekend last year so we use past as an adjective with a noun to explain something that happened or existed in the past some examples which of your past jobs was the most challenging which of your past jobs was the most challenging so here past modifies jobs that means jobs you had before so before now your past jobs which of your past jobs in the past was the most challenging the next example in past meetings we talked about hiring new staff in past meetings we talked about hiring new staff here past is modifying meetings so that means meetings before now in those meetings plural in those meetings we talked about hiring new staff getting new staff members so past in this way refers to something that happened before now or it can refer to something that existed before now let's continue to the next use of past as an adjective so we use past to mean ago or time that has gone by so let's look at some examples of this first one i've been working on this project for the past two weeks i've been working on this project for the past two weeks here you'll notice i'm using this i've been working pattern so this is a present perfect progressive pattern this shows us i started working on the project two weeks ago and i've been working refers to continuous work for those two weeks so that means my start point was in the past which i'll talk about later my starting point was two weeks ago and i've been working i continued working until now the present so this refers to time that has gone by so this time period we kind of explained that with past the past two weeks this the past two weeks means the most recent the past two weeks the past hour the past week the past month that means this most recent week or this most recent time period whatever that is so the past two weeks means this time that has gone by one more example of this we met for a coffee this past weekend this past weekend so again this weekend that went by so meaning last weekend in this case this past weekend i could change this to say we met for a coffee last weekend but you might hear someone say this past weekend so this past weekend again we know it means the most recent weekend because it means this so you might hear this or the and that shows us the most recent of that time period so we use past in this way and this is kind of a pattern you might hear more in american english you might hear slightly different uses that follow this meaning in british english okay let's continue to one more point about the adjective use of past so we use past when it's relating to verb tense so i've used it maybe in this lesson when we want to talk about actions before the present and we're explaining it in terms of language we use the expression past tense so for example i think i said here this is present perfect tense we also use past to talk about the verb tense we use to explain past actions or past existence for example ate is the past tense form of eat so the verb eat in past tense is eight eight is the past tense form of eat one more example please conjugate the verbs to past tense please conjugate the verbs to past tense conjugate means change the verb form so please conjugate the verbs to past tense so when you're talking about actions or existence in the past and you want to talk about the language related word we use to do that you can use past tense so this is an overview of the adjective uses of the word past i want to go now to number two here the noun use of the word past so as a noun in a sentence past means the time before the present so that just means any time before the present we can call that the past so for example the introduction to this lesson is in the past some more examples he has a dark past a dark past so dark means it's not good probably dark so it's not light it's not great it's dark so that means his life before the present time is dark one more example don't think about the past don't think about the past so that means the things that happened before don't think about those things in the past so past as a noun means just any time all the time before the present and you'll often see the before past the past don't think about the past because there's only one sort of if that makes sense it's like all time before now is the past it's in the past okay so lastly here i want to talk about number three which is the prepositional use of the word past i'm going to talk about two points here first is using past to mean after after for example we're past small talk we're past small talk in this situation past means we're beyond small talk so for example this sentence might be in a situation where two people have become friends maybe at first you use small talk how's the weather how was your weekend very easy conversations but after time you become closer and you can talk about more complicated issues or you can talk about deeper topics you can say we're past small talk this means our relationship is beyond or it's after small talk we're past small talk so this refers to someone's relationship we often use this to talk about activities or our relationships to other people another very common example is using it with time periods for example it's half past four it's half past 4 that means it's 4 30. it's half past 4 means it's half after 4. so this prepositional use of past means after after finally then is this prepositional use so we use past to mean moving close to and then beyond moving close to and then beyond so a great example is a car a car and for example a house so the car moves close to the house and then the car moves beyond the house this is a very common example of how this is used so if we imagine the same idea with these example sentences we can see how past communicates that here he walked past the restaurant he walked past the restaurant so here if this is my restaurant here's a person walking he walked past the restaurant so this means he moved close to the restaurant then beyond the restaurant he walked past the restaurant another example they drove the boat past the harbor they drove the boat past the harbor so again here is my harbor here is the boat they drove the boat past the harbor so that means there's no stopping it was a continuing motion so past the harbor or past the restaurant we use past as a preposition in this way this is a key point of confusion i think and i'm going to talk about past in just a moment so these are the main points i want to talk about with past as adjective as noun and as preposition okay so with that in mind let's take a look now at past p-a-s-s-e-d past so past is the past tense form of the verb pass so i talked about over here we use past p-a-s-t to talk about the language-related terms we use for verbs so here past tense of the verb pass so one point of confusion that happens here is that this past tense past shares a meaning with the prepositional use of past i talked about here so this to move beyond meaning this is shared there's one meaning of the verb pass which is to move beyond something that is shared with the prepositional uh past use however just because the meaning is shared does not mean we can use them in the same way we cannot use past and past in the same way we have to create different sentence structures so let's change these sentences i talked about in the beginning of this lesson to pass pass's ed form here he passed the restaurant he passed the restaurant so i can use the same example i mentioned earlier so to move in a direction and then to move beyond something you'll notice here there's no like verb there's no hint about how he moved was he in a car was he walking was he jogging was he skating we don't know we only know he passed the restaurant somehow in this sentence he walked past the restaurant we do know we know he was walking so this is your choice you can choose to use he passed or he walked past it's totally up to you both are correct one more example the boat passed the harbor the boat passed the harbor so again same situation we don't know exactly how the boat passed the harbor did the boat quickly pass the harbor was someone driving the boat was the boat just floating drifting we don't know but this communicates the basic situation the boat moved in the direction of the harbor and then continued beyond it so past does share a meaning here but the sentence structure is different so please keep this in mind all of these sentences are correct but these sentences give us a little bit more information so we might use sentences like these when it's very clear like for example if if you're waiting in the restaurant and you see your friend walk in front of the restaurant and continue walking you might think oh he passed the restaurant like you know he was walking so you might use it in a situation like this in a situation where it it's important to communicate exactly how the person passed you might use the past pattern okay so this is one point of confusion i think for many learners now let's move on to another point this is related to time so when i talked about p-a-s-t i talked a bit about uh how we use it to express time that has gone by we have a p-a-s-s-e-d form as well so for example two hours passed two hours passed here it's being used as a verb again this is the past tense of the verb pass so two hours passed that means two hours went by for example i'm waiting i'm waiting for an appointment and two hours passed that means two hours went by i cannot say two hours p-a-s-t that is incorrect this is a verb p-a-s-t as we talked about here is an adjective i cannot use it there you could say for example i've been waiting as i used here i've been waiting for the past two hours that would be correct we cannot use p-a-s-s-e-d in this way so again this may be a point of some confusion but keep in mind verb form two hours past the verb is coming after the time period and past two hours or two weeks your adjective is coming before your time period let's look at one more example a month has passed and i haven't heard from my client a month has passed and i haven't heard from my client so here i'm using in this case again present perfect tense so a month is my starting point a month ago a month has passed so in this time period i have not heard from my client a month has passed so again this is the verb form past i cannot use p-a-s-t in this way i have to use the verb form because this is a present perfect sentence structure a month has passed and i haven't heard from my client okay i want to talk about a couple of other points about this verb past actually there are many uses of the verb pass i can't cover all of them in this lesson but a very important point to note is this one to refuse something or to not accept something so when we're in a casual situation and we want to refuse something in a friendly way we can use the verb pass like i'll pass or just pass so that sounds a little bit friendly sometimes a little bit rough in past tense we use past as i've talked about and we use often in many cases the preposition on before the item we refuse or before the item we do not accept for example she passed on dessert she passed on dessert means she refused dessert she didn't want dessert she did not accept dessert she passed on dessert another example he passed on my offer he passed on my offer he declined my offer he refused my offer so this means refuse did not accept something important to note though using passed on with nothing after the preposition can cause some maybe very important confusion or some very troubling confusion when we use he or she passed or he or she passed on it can refer to death so we use the expression to pass on to maybe more politely say he or she died so he passed on last week means he died last week if the context is not clear you may cause some confusion if you just use on passed on like she passed on of course if you're talking about like work or a dinner situation there's probably a low chance of confusion if you use she passed or he passed it's probably not going to cause confusion but there may be some situations where it's very important to note this part of your sentence so please be careful when you use past and passed on in this way as i said there are many different meanings for the verb pass but i wanted to talk about some that can cause some confusion especially with the uh the word past p-a-s-t as i talked about earlier in this lesson so i hope that this helps clarify or i hope it helps make some things clear about the differences between these two words remember the key differences are in grammatical structure in the parts that i focused on in this lesson specifically this part and in this part too so i hope that it was helpful for you but if you have any questions or comments or if you want to practice making some sentences please feel free to do so in the comment section of this video of course if you liked this lesson don't forget to give it a thumbs up subscribe to our channel if you haven't already and check us out at englishclass101.com for some other things that can help you with your english studies thanks very much for watching this lesson and i will see you again soon bye bye want to speed up your language learning take your very first lesson with us you'll start speaking in minutes and master real conversations sign up for your free lifetime account just click the link in the description

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Id: N9qFHX-hwSY

Length: 20min 23sec (1223 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2021