passer

English

Etymology

pass +‎ -er

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈpɑːsə(ɹ)/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈpæsəɹ/
• Rhymes: -æsə(ɹ)

Noun

passer (plural passers)

1. One who succeeds in passing a test, etc.
   • 2008, David L. Streiner, Geoffrey R. Norman, Health Measurement Scales:

     The distributions of scores on the exam for passers and failers are plotted […]

2. One who passes something along; a distributor.

   a passer of counterfeit banknotes

3. (sports) Someone who passes, someone who makes a pass.
   • 1991, Rex Mossop, The Moose That Roared, Sydney: Ironbark Press, page 157:

     A superb passer of the ball, we expected him to wipe the floor with the opposition.

   1. (American football) A football player who makes a forward pass, who may be (but not limited to) the quarterback.
4. (chess, informal) A passed pawn.
5. (archaic) One who passes; a passer-by.
   • 1878, Henry James, The Europeans:

     There was a promise of it in the gorgeous purity of the western sky; there was an intimation in the mild, unimpertinent gaze of the passers of a certain natural facility in things.

   • 1904, National Magazine, volume 20, page 147:

     Passers stopped and began to stare. A policeman was approaching up the street. Dave dodged back into the cab and banged the door.

6. (sociology) One who is able to "pass", or be accepted as a member of a race, sex or other group to which society would not otherwise regard them as belonging.
   • 2003, Brooke Kroeger, Passing: When People Can't Be Who They Are:

     Explores the history, literature, and sociology of passing, and provides case studies of six individuals who are "passers," including a black man who passed as a white Jew and a lesbian naval officer who passed as straight.

   • 2014, Risa Bear, Homecomings, page 69:

     Passers and would-be passers make every effort to be convincing in their chosen gender role […]

Translations

See also

Anagrams

• Arpses, Aspers, Serpas, Spears, Speras, aspers, parses, prases, presas, repass, sarpes, spares, sparse, spaser, spears

Danish

Etymology 1

From German Passer.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pasər/,

Noun

passer c (singular definite passeren, plural indefinite passere)

1. compass, pair of compasses
2. dividers
3. calipers

Inflection

See also

• passer on the Danish Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^da

Etymology 2

See passere (“to pass”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /paseːr/,

Verb

passer or passér

1. imperative of passere

Dutch

Etymology

From passen (“to measure a size”) +‎ -er.

Pronunciation

• audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɑsər

Noun

passer m (plural passers, diminutive passertje n)

1. compass (device used with a pencil to draw an arc or circle on paper)

Descendants

• Negerhollands: passer
• → Papiamentu: paser
• → Saramaccan: pása

French

Etymology

Inherited from Middle French passer, from Old French passer, from Vulgar Latin *passāre, derived from Latin passus (“step”, noun).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /pa.se/, /pɑ.se/

• audio

  (file)

Verb

passer

1. to go past
2. to cross (a border)
3. (law) to pass

   passer une loi ― to pass a law

4. to spend (time)

   J’ai passé les vacances en Espagne. ― I spent the holidays in Spain.

   J’ai passé une splendide soirée chez toi. ― I had a great evening at your place.

5. to publish (a newspaper)
6. (transitive) to take, to sit (an exam or test)

   J’ai réussi l’examen que j’avais passé en avril. ― I passed the exam that I took in April.

7. (intransitive) to pass (an exam or test)

   Il est passé à l’examen. ― He passed the exam.

8. (dated) (transitive) to pass (an exam or test)

   Il a passé l’examen. ― He passed the exam.

9. (public transportation) to run

   Le train passe toutes les vingt minutes. ― The train runs every 20 minutes.

10. to exceed (a limit)
11. to percolate
12. to hand down, to pass on
13. to be allowed
14. (intransitive) to pass, to go (between two entities)
    • 1908, Gaston Leroux, chapter 1, in Le Mystère de la chambre jaune [The Mystery of the Yellow Room]‎, published 2009:

      L’assassin n’avait donc pas passé par là et ne pouvait se sauver par là […]

      The murderer, therefore, could not have entered that way and could not possibly escape that way.

15. (transitive) to show (a movie)
16. to go up (a grade)
17. to shift (change gear)
    1. to go down
    2. to go up
18. to stop by, to pop in

    Il est passé nous voir. ― He stopped by to see us.

    Je vais y passer demain pour mes affaires.

    I'm going to stop by there tomorrow for my things.

19. to pass away, to die
20. (music) to spin (e.g. a disk)
21. (television) to show (be on television)
22. (sports) to pass (kick, throw, hit etc. the ball to another player)
23. (athletics) to pass (the relay baton)
24. to pass on (infect someone else with a disease)
25. (transitive) to put, to place, to slip (move a part of one's body somewhere else)
    • 1908, Gaston Leroux, Le Mystère de la chambre jaune, 2009 ed., Wikisource, chap. 1; translated 1908 by anonymous, Margaret Jull Costa (ed.), as The Mystery of the Yellow Room, 2003 ed., Dedalus, →ISBN:

      [...] et, par-dessus les volets, les barreaux intacts, des barreaux à travers lesquels vous n’auriez pas passé le bras…

      and, as well as those shutters, there were iron bars so close together that you could not even have got your arm through them.

26. to wipe, rub

    Elle passe de la crème sur son ventre.

    She's rubbing cream on her belly.

27. to skip a go
28. to put (make something undergo something)
29. (card games) to pass (not play upon one's turn)
30. (reflexive) to take place, to happen, to come to pass

    Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé ici ? ― What happened here?

31. (reflexive, for time) to go by
32. (reflexive, transitive with de) to do without

    Je ne peux pas me passer de café le matin.

    I can't do without a cup of coffee in the morning.

33. to don

    Il passa son pantalon. ― He put on his pants.

34. (transitive with pour) to be thought to be, to be said to be, to be taken for

    faire passer quelqu’un pour quelque chose ― to make someone out to be something

    se faire passer pour ― to pass oneself off as, to pose as, to impersonate

Usage notes

• This verb uses the auxiliary verb avoir when used transitively (or with a transitive sense, even when the complement is omitted); otherwise (when it is intransitive), it uses être.

Conjugation

Synonyms

• (reflexive, to happen): se produire, arriver

Derived terms

Descendants

• → Alemannic German: passiere
• → German: passieren
• → Romanian: pasa

Further reading

• “passer”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.

Anagrams

• pressa

Ladin

Etymology

From Vulgar Latin *passāre, derived from Latin passus (“step”, noun).

Verb

passer

1. to proceed

Conjugation

• Ladin conjugation varies from one region to another. Hence, the following conjugation should be considered as typical, not as exhaustive.

Latin

Etymology

From Proto-Italic *passros with a declension change from second to third, from Proto-Indo-European *p(e)t-tro-s (“who flies, bird”), from *peth₂- (“to fly”). Related to penna.

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈpas.ser/,
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈpas.ser/,

Noun

passer m (genitive passeris); third declension

1. sparrow
   • c. 84 BCE – 54 BCE, Catullus, Carmina 3.3–4:

     Passer mortuus est meae puellae.
     Passer, deliciae meae puellae

     My girl's sparrow is dead.
     The sparrow, my girl's pet

2. turbot
   • 43 BCE – c. 17 CE, Ovid, Halieutica 118–126:

     At contrā herbōsā piscēs luxantur harēnā
     ut scarus, ēpastās sōlus quī rūminat ēscās,
     fēcundumque genus mēnae lamyrusque smarisque
     atque immunda chromis, meritō vīlissima salpa
     atque avium phȳcis nīdōs imitāta sub undīs
     et squāmās tenuī suffūsus sanguine mullus,
     fulgentēs soleae candōre et concolor illīs
     passer et Hadriacō mīrandus lītore rhombus,
     tum leporēs lātī, tum mollēs tergore rānae

     On the other hand, fish that revel in the grassy sand
     such as the scar, the only one that chews over eaten up food,
     the prolific kind of the maena, lamyrus and smaris
     and the unclean chronic, the deservedly worthless salpa
     and the phycis that imitates the nests of birds under the waves
     and the mullet whose scales are suffused with tenous blood,
     and the sole flashing with whiteness and the turbot
     of the same colour, and the amazing flatfish on the Adriatic Shore,
     then the broad sea-hares, then the soft-bodied sea-frog

Declension

Third-declension noun.

Related terms

• passercula, passerculus
• passerīnus

Descendants

References

• “passer”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• “passer”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• passer in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
• De Vaan, Michiel (2008) Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages (Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series; 7), Leiden, Boston: Brill, →ISBN, page 449

Middle French

Etymology

From Old French passer.

Verb

passer

1. to pass; to go by
   • 15th century, Rustichello da Pisa (original author), Mazarine Master (scribe), The Travels of Marco Polo, page 3, line 2:

     Cy aprés parle comment les deux freres passerent le desert

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Conjugation

• Middle French conjugation varies from one text to another. Hence, the following conjugation should be considered as typical, not as exhaustive.

Descendants

• French: passer
  • → Alemannic German: passiere
  • → German: passieren
  • → Romanian: pasa

References

• passer on Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (1330–1500) (in French)

Norwegian Bokmål

Verb

passer

1. imperative of passere
2. present of passe

Old French

Etymology

From Vulgar Latin *passāre, derived from Latin passus (“step”, noun).

Verb

passer

1. to pass; to pass by

Conjugation

This verb conjugates as a first-group verb ending in -er. The forms that would normally end in *-ss, *-sss, *-sst are modified to s, s, st. Old French conjugation varies significantly by date and by region. The following conjugation should be treated as a guide.

Descendants

• Middle French: passer
  • French: passer
    • → Alemannic German: passiere
    • → German: passieren
    • → Romanian: pasa
• Norman: pâsser, pâssaïr
• → Middle Dutch: passen
  • Dutch: passen
• → Middle English: passen, pasen, pacen
  • English: pass, pace
  • Scots: pass
  • Yola: paaced (preterite)
• → Middle High German: passen
  • German: passen

Further reading

• “pass”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.