husband's passing
1
5.6
- noun
- I am sorry to hear of your husband's passing.
Examples
-
Karen, I am so sorry to hear about your husband's passing, yet I am so happy to know that he is with the One who loves him more deeply than anyone else.
Blog text (28) -
Karen, I am so sorry to hear about your husband's passing, yet I am so happy to know that he is with the One who loves him more deeply than anyone else.
-
I'm sensing that you're at peace with your husband's passing.
-
At that moment, Ikuyo had clearly understood that her mother's distress was caused by the sufferings she had had to endure since her husband's passing.
Fiction book (1999) -
I am sorry to hear of your husband's passing.
-
I'm sensing that you're at peace with your husband's passing.
Synonyms
3
4.6
Living after your husband or wife dies without getting married again
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
husband's + passing
The phrase combines the possessive 'husband's' (belonging to or relating to a husband) with 'passing' (a polite term for death), so its meaning 'the death of a woman's husband' is directly inferable from the constituents. The expression is euphemistic but compositionally transparent and would be understandable to a B1 learner who knows the two words and standard English possessive structure.
Etymology
The phrase husband's passing uses the word passing as a gentle way to say 'to die'. It gives the image of someone moving quietly from one place to another, so people use it to talk kindly about 'the death of a woman's husband'.