to live in the past
19
6.4
- phrasal verb
:
vivir en el pasado
- People who live in the past should not expect the rest of us to join them there.
- Stop living in the past
- Quit living in the past
- Keep living in the past
How do we stop living in the past and in the future?
- How do we stop living in the past and in the future?
- One, that they didn't live in the past, they lived in the present.
- And first thing I tell him is you can't live in the past.
- And he said if you're depressed, you're living in the past.
- It always parrots this theme of relationships can only move forward if we don't live in the past.
- And I think it's different than that kind of like pining nostalgia that where people want to live in the past.
- And I was living in the past and being someone who completely wasn't me, but who had control of me.
- But a lot of times we live in the past and we don't.
Examples
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Stop living in the past.
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But a lot of times we live in the past and we don't.
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How do we stop living in the past and in the future?
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I think you live in the past too much.
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So stop living in the past and carry out my orders.
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You live in the past.
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Stop living in the past and look at what you got right in front of you.
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Not as long as you insist on living in the past!
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If you don't allow times to change, then you might end up living in the past.
Blog text (3) -
Many people find it challenging to stop living in the past and embrace new opportunities.
Synonyms
323
2.6
Think about the past, especially a time you remember
To feel comfort by remembering happy times from the past
To feel a past event or emotion again
Antonyms
How Past-Focused
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'to dwell on memories' is transparently derived from combining 'live' (to inhabit) with 'in the past' (located in past time); the figurative extension—treating the past as a place one 'lives' in—is straightforward and follows normal compositional patterns. This construction is cross-linguistically common (e.g. Spanish vivir en el pasado), so a B1 learner who knows the constituents will very likely infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
Live in the past gives the image of someone who chooses to live in the past, as if their home is full of old memories. So, it means 'to keep thinking about old times and not take part in what is happening now'.