passage
Pluralpassages
Pluralpassages
Formspassages, passaging, passaged
- 1A paragraph or section of written text or music that carries a particular meaning.
She quoted a famous passage from the novel in her essay.
The pianist struggled with a fast passage in the second movement.
Similarexcerpt, extract, section
Note
A stretch you move through, as the word's origin suggests. Middle English borrowed passage from Old French, where it came from passer, "to pass." Readers move through a passage of scripture, and players work through the difficult passages of a score. The word names a span with its own sense and shape, which is why one quotes a passage rather than a few random lines.
- 2A narrow way, such as a corridor or hall, connecting one part of a building to another.
A dark passage led from the kitchen to the servants' quarters.
Visitors follow a winding passage through the castle to the main hall.
Similarcorridor, hallway, hall, passageway
- 3
- 4The act of passing: the movement of something across or through a space.
The new tunnel eased the passage of traffic between the two cities.
Customs officials controlled the passage of goods across the border.
Similarmovement, transit, flow
Note
The core action noun behind many of the others, almost always followed by of and the thing that moves: the passage of a knife, of canal traffic, of goods. The same frame carries the advance of time and the approval of a bill. The noun after of tells the reader which meaning is in play.
- 5
- 6The advance or steady progression of time.
The passage of time had worn the inscription on the gravestone smooth.
With the passage of the years, the village grew into a busy town.
Similarpassing
- 7
- 8
- 9A fee paid for traveling or being carried from one place to another, especially by ship.
The family booked passage on a ship bound for the New World.
He could not afford the passage and stayed behind at the port.
Similarfare
- 10A strait or other narrow stretch of water connecting two larger bodies of water.
The captain guided the vessel through a treacherous passage between the islands.
Fog reduced visibility as they entered the northern passage.
Note
A sailor's word for a strait, preserved in names such as the Northwest Passage, where it is capitalized as part of the name. It names the waterway itself. The journey through it is part of a voyage, and the two meanings often meet in a single sentence about the same stretch of sea.
- 11In caving, a long, narrow underground cavity carved out by water or created by rockfall.
Cavers squeezed through a low passage that opened into a vast chamber.
The flooded passage stretched for nearly a mile under the mountain.
Similartunnel
Note
Cavers borrowed a builder's word for this: underground, a passage is the cave's own corridor, the part you travel along rather than stand in. The name goes back through Old French to passer, "to pass," and the caving use keeps that sense of movement. Cavers set it against the chamber, where the cave opens out, and they describe it freely by its conditions: a low passage, a flooded passage. Compare the indoor corridor.
- 12A polite word for the vagina, the canal leading from the vulva to the cervix.
The midwife checked the passage for any tearing after the birth.
Strong contractions pushed the baby down the passage.
Note
A euphemism at home in romance fiction and sex manuals, such as Bertrice Small's A Love for All Time (1986) and Usha Sarup's Expert Lovemaking (1987). It softens without sounding clinical, so it can read as coy in medical or plain-spoken writing, where vagina is expected. Context does the work: in most sentences, readers will take the word in its everyday senses.
- 13
- 14To put something, such as a pathogen or stem cell, through a host or culture medium, typically to propagate it.
To passage the cells, the technician transfers them into fresh medium.
Researchers passaged the virus through several cell cultures.
Similarsubculture
Note
Lab English has made a regular verb of the noun: passaged and passaging, never passed. The organism is the object, and through or to names the route: a virus passaged through a series of goats, a culture passaged to an agar plate. The distinct form keeps the technical act apart from everyday pass. Its spelling is shared with an unrelated dressage verb.
- 15A painting technique using tight brushwork to link objects across separate spatial planes, commonly seen in Cubist works.
The artist used passage to blend the seated figure into the background.
Critics praised the subtle passage linking the table and the wall in the still life.
Note
A critic's term for a Cubist habit. Tight brushwork carries an edge across from one object to another, so things that sit in different planes of space seem to share a surface. Used this way, the word is usually uncountable: a painter uses passage, and a canvas shows passage. That keeps it apart from a section of text or music, even in writing about art.
- 16The repeated transfer of a microorganism or cell line through successive hosts or culture media; serial passage.
After twenty rounds of passage, the virus had lost much of its virulence.
Repeated passage in the lab weakened the bacterium considerably.
Note
Laboratory shorthand for serial passage, the name of a working routine. Each transfer of a virus or bacterium into a fresh host or medium is a round of passage. Repeated rounds are how a strain is weakened or kept going. The matching verb is to passage a culture.
- 17USpa-SAHZH/pæˈsɑʒ/UKPAS-ahzh/ˈpasɑːʒ/In classical dressage, a very collected, energetic, elevated trot with a longer moment of suspension between footfalls than a working trot.
The horse moved into a flawless passage across the arena.
Judges scored her passage among the highest of the competition.
Note
A separate word that happens to share the spelling. The dressage passage came through French passager from Italian passeggiare, not from the Old French line behind the passage of a text. In the arena, a horse goes into or performs a passage, and judges score it. The verb, to passage, is used of the horse itself.
- 18USpa-SAHZH/pæˈsɑʒ/UKPAS-ahzh/ˈpasɑːʒ/To perform the passage, the collected and elevated suspended trot of classical dressage.
The stallion passaged down the centerline to loud applause.
With the lightest aid, the mare began to passage.
Note
The dressage verb comes from a different word than the passage of corridors and texts: it traces to French passager, from Italian passeggiare. The horse is its subject, and it takes no object, so a horse passages but a rider does not passage a horse. Cunninghame Graham's Hope (1915) shows it outside the arena: "the horse passaged and reared." Its forms are regular: passages, passaging, passaged.
- 19Of a bird: under a year old, having left the nest and living independently in the wild.
The falconer preferred a passage hawk for its hunting experience.
A passage falcon is often easier to train than a bird taken from the nest.
Note
A falconer's adjective, used only before the noun: a passage hawk, a passage falcon. One never says a hawk is passage, or calls one more or less passage. Falconers prize these young birds because they have not yet developed the adult behaviors that make a hawk harder to train.
- 20A two-player gambling game played with three dice, in which a player tries to throw a double higher than ten.
The two travelers wagered their last coins on a game of passage by the fire.
He lost a month's wages at passage before the sun came up.
Showing meanings only.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of passage apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origins
This word was borrowed into Middle English from Old French passage, which came from passer, meaning "to pass."
This word comes from French passager, which in turn came from Italian passeggiare.