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pastness

pastness

1 9.9
The state of belonging to an earlier time
  • noun
  • /ˈpæstnəs/
translation icon : pasado
  • The artist captures the pastness of the landscape, evoking a deep sense of nostalgia.
  • the pastness of the past

Examples

  • The pastness of her memories often brings her both joy and sadness.

  • It marks the mobilization of reflective nostalgia into an affective retelling of queer history, while constantly drawing attention to the pastness of the present.

    Academic text (2013)
  • That it is not their pastness that makes them historical.

  • The parameters of this pastness vary somewhat.

    Academic text (2000)
  • Stare decisis, for example, holds that past decisions, simply by virtue of their historicity, their pastness, shall be binding.

    Academic text (1994)
  • The image indeed returns, but it emerges from a past whose pastness, adhering to it like some dark shadow, accompanies it into the present.

    Academic text (2002)
  • This meeting or blending extricates the work from its pastness and enlivens the viewer's present.

    Academic text (2007)
  • Brideshead's war provides Ryder's portal to the past, but in a mode underscoring both its irretrievable pastness and the present's relative poverty.

    Academic text (2000)
  • Although the Evre boat trip is an experience that Gracq has not repeated since his childhood—an experience, therefore, which is nearly synonymous with the idea of pastness—there exists a connection between this past and the future of the experiencing subject, as well as the present of the writer.

    Academic text (1995)
  • In literature, the pastness of a character's experiences shapes their current choices.

Synonyms

historicalness
vspastness
8.4

Being a real event that happened in the past

refers to belonging to or existing in past without proving occurrence
antecedency
vspastness
  • Formal
9.9

Being earlier than another event in time

focuses on being in the past rather than relative temporal order

Antonyms

1.0

The time that comes after the present

287 1.0

The time that is happening now

1 9.5

The time that comes after now

A feeling of being fully in the moment and aware of what happens

Surface Forms

pastness singular
pastnesses plural

Morphology

pastness = past (transparent) = past + ness

The noun is a straightforward nominalization of the adjective 'past' using the productive suffix '-ness', so its meaning is directly derived.

Etymology

The word pastness comes from past ('gone by') and the ending -ness ('state or quality'), like in darkness or happiness. So pastness means the 'state of belonging to the past', or the quality of being 'in the past'.