past

«past» in Mova's school dictionary: time that has gone, before now — its meaning for a pupil, its sense in the lessons and examples, with 5 sentences of Mova's corpora that use it.

part of speech

noun (the past); adjective (past); preposition (past); adverb (past)

meaning for a pupil

1) The past is time that has gone, before now. tree →

2) Past (preposition) means going by something: he walked past the shop. tree →

3) In telling time, past means after the hour: «Half past three» is 3:30. tree →

4) Past (adjective) means just gone: the past week. tree →

5) Past also means beyond: past midnight, past the bridge. tree →

sense in the lessons

In maths: telling time: «half past», «10 past 4»; time before now; going by a place; «the past 3 days» is a number of days. In grammar: the past tense (walked, ran). In history: learning about the past. In stories: «long in the past», «she ran past the gate».

examples

• It is half past 2. tree →
• The bus came 20 minutes past 8. tree →
• In the past 3 days she read 60 pages. tree →
• He walked past 5 houses. tree →
• In the past, people wrote with feather pens. tree →
• It's past your bedtime! tree →
• «Ran» is the past tense of «run». tree →
• Quarter past ten is 10:15. tree →
• Go past the church and turn left. tree →
• Suddenly there rode past another horseman. tree →

note

«Minutes past» an hour: add to the hour. «Half past» = 30 minutes, «quarter past» = 15. Trap: «the past 3 days» gives a number of days. Trap: past and passed sound the same: «passed» is the verb («she passed the ball»), «past» is the place or time word. Opposite: future; with time, «to» (quarter to 4 = 3:45).

In the corpora

• It was reported that lawyers in America handed a court past cases that a chatbot had invented, and that the judge fined them.
• A giraffe's dark tongue is about 45 to 50 centimetres long and pulls leaves past the thorns of acacia trees.
• Picture a city garden at midnight: a fox trots past the bins and somewhere a rabbit freezes, then zigzags away.
• In tests honeybees learned to fly past a certain number of landmarks, up to about four, to find sugar water.
• They watch him splash past, rolling badly but rowing his hardest.

Trees and pragmatics

Every meaning and example of «past» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.