The past is everything before a chosen now
Define a moment, and the past is all events earlier than it—contrasted with present and future along a linear timeline. English past began as a spelling of passed, the participle of Middle English passen. It became an adjective in the 1300s and a noun a century later.
The past is every event that happened before some chosen moment, understood only in contrast with the present and the future. The idea comes from the way people experience time as a line running in one direction, and individuals reach their own past through memory. Since writing was invented, people have also kept written accounts of it, and it is studied by fields as varied as history, archaeology, geology, paleontology, paleoclimatology, historical linguistics, and physical cosmology.
The English word began as one of many spellings of passed, the participle of the Middle English verb passen, alongside forms such as ypassed, passid, and pass'd. It became an adjective and a preposition in the fourteenth century and a noun, as in the past, in the fifteenth, by dropping the word it once described. English grammar sorts verbs into twelve tenses, four of them past: she walked, she was walking for a stretch of time, she had walked before some earlier point, and she had been walking up to that point.
The word does other jobs too. It marks former office holders, as in past president or past champions, and it describes position beyond a landmark, as in a house just past the train station or a runner speeding past. Clock time uses it for minutes after the hour, as in half past twelve, and people say they are past an age or past caring. Charles Dickens gave the idea a famous face in A Christmas Carol, where the Ghost of Christmas Past shows the miser Ebenezer Scrooge scenes from his childhood and youth to teach him that joy need not come from wealth.
Source: Past
