pastness
Americannoun
Etymology
Origin of pastness
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
"And that process too is the process whereby the pain of the past in its pastness is converted to the future tense of joy."
From Salon • Sep. 17, 2022
Eliot put it nearly a century ago, the historical sense “involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.”
From Los Angeles Times • May 25, 2017
Eliot called a sense “not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.”
From Washington Post • May 3, 2017
Last June, when its fourth season concluded, “The Americans” was a series about the pastness of the past.
From The New Yorker • Mar. 7, 2017
I think of the pastness of the past: how the moment I am alive in, prisoned in, moves like a slowly tumbling form through darkness, the underground river.
From "Grendel" by John Gardner
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
