pass, v. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

pass v.

1. (also pass up, put a pass) to ignore, to have no interest in, to reject or say no (to); esp. in phr. I’ll pass, as a response to an offer or suggestion [SE pass by].

1872		‘Mark Twain’ Innocents at Home 332: I’ll have to pass, I judge.
1897		A.H. Lewis Wolfville 217: J’inin’ the church in my case is mighty likely to be a bluff. An’ so I passes it up.
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 141: He wanted me to cover the whole state of Illinois [...] but I passed and he paid me off.
1910		‘O. Henry’ ‘The Call of the Tame’ Strictly Business (1915) 107: What’s this? Horse with the heaves? I pass.
1911		Alaska Citizen 28 Aug. 7/2: He passed up the home girls as though they were pikers.
1914		E. Dyson Spats’ Fact’ry (1922) 57: If you thinks more of your cigarettes than you do of me, smoke ’em. I pass.
1923		H.C. Witwer Fighting Blood 314: It did hurt to have all my old friends practically pass me up.
1933		W.R. Burnett Dark Hazard (1934) 26: He had passed up better ones than her out of laziness long before he was married.
1937		E. Anderson Thieves Like Us (1999) 39: I’ll pass this time.
1941		B. Schulberg What Makes Sammy Run? (1992) 257: I knew you wouldn’t mind if I passed up the opening tonight.
1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 126: I think I’d better pass. I’ve been on whisky all day.
1952		J. Jones From Here to Eternity (1998) 640: To-day, in this heat, he had thought maybe there would be somebody who had passed up chow.
1967		L. Bruce Essential Lenny Bruce 16: I pass with six niggers and eight micks.
1974		D. Goines Daddy Cool (1997) 45: The idea of passing up such a sweet thing bothered him.
1978		R. Price Ladies’ Man (1985) 152: Maybe we should pass on the grass.
1979		E. Torres After Hours 122: They weren’t sayin’ too much to look at, so Kleinfeld passed.
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 22: I decided not to pass it up.
1987		B. Chatwin Songlines 42: ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ll pass.’.
1989		M. Amis London Fields 55: He would have passed up a visit to the Louvre or the Prado in favour of ten minutes alone with a knicker catalogue.
1995		J. Cameron Vinnie Got Blown Away 15: It was quality blow, couldn’t afford to pass it up.
1997		(con. 1970s) G. Pelecanos King Suckerman (1998) 165: I’ll just go ahead and pass on the Sport.
1999		Guardian 8 July 3: She passed on the chocolate biscuits, but was happy to drink the Tetley.
1999		J. Ridley Love Is a Racket 31: How you gonna pass it up? Forty dollars? How you gonna pass that up?
2000		G. Pelecanos Shame the Devil 81: Johnson’s cool. But I think I’ll pass on the Wilson Boulevard crawl.
2001		N. Green Shooting Dr. Jack (2002) 274: He could’ve thought what he wanted, when he saw her, and still passed her up.

2. in senses of SE pass as/for.

(a) of a light-skinned black person, to pose as white; thus n. the act of passing oneself off as white (see cite 1948).

[1899		in C. Chesnutt House Behind The Cedars (1995) intro. i: In a letter to his publisher in 1899 Charles Chesnutt described the plot of The House Behind The Cedars succinctly thus: ‘It is the story of a colored girl who passes for white.’].
1927		Van Vechten ‘Introduction’ in James Weldon Johnson Autobiog. of an Ex-Coloured Man (1912/1927) viii : That he ‘passes’ the title indicates.
1928		C. McKay Home to Harlem 64: He knew swell white folks in politics, and had a grand automobile and a high-yaller wife that hadn’t no need of painting to pass.
1931		N. Van Patten ‘Vocab. of the Amer. Negro’ in AS VII:1 30: passing. V. v. Passing for white.
1941		A. Lomax Mister Jelly Roll (1952) 3: Louise, the oldest daughter, so fair she could always pass.
1947		S. Lewis Kingsblood Royal (2001) 64: What’s this about colored people ‘passing,’ if they’re light enough?
1948		Dan Burley ‘Back Door Stuff’ 20 Nov. [synd. col.] [T]hat pass jive is all right for Mississippi [...] but in New York it don’t mean a thing.
1953		W. Brown Monkey On My Back (1954) 151: All four of the other children were light-skinned, the girl Margery being light enough to ‘pass’.
1966		L. Bennett ‘Pass Fe White’ in Jamaica Labrish 212: An a nice wite bwoy she love, dah – / Gwan wid her like sey she pass.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Mama Black Widow 75: Papa [had] far too much yellow in his complexion to pass.
1980		J.L. Gwaltney Drylongso 219: Course, we always did have some peolas, an’ everybody know most of these whitefolks is passin’.
1996		P. Beatty White Boy Shuffle 119: We missed you at the family reunion! Aunt Tessy wanted to know if you was still passing for Armenian.
1999		Guardian G2 14 July 14: The playwright urges that European as well as Asian actors be cast in the Anglo-Indian roles, since many can ‘pass’ for white.
2002		‘Touré’ Portable Promised Land (ms.) 151: We Words (My Favorite Things) [...] Brown. Bronze. Beige. Ebony. Mocha. Mahogany. Mulatto. Quadroon. Octaroon. Oreo. Creole. Cocoa. Caramel. Café-au-lait. Colored. Passing.
2014		S.A. Cosby ‘Grandpa’s Place’ in ThugLit Sept. [ebook] Shit, if the light hits him just right he could pass, Boochie thought’.

(b) of a homosexual, to appear heterosexual to those one encounters; similarly of a transsexual, to ‘pass’ as a woman or man.

[1835		Duncombe Dens of London 78: Hatton Garden. Extraordinary Case— A Man-Woman. [...] ‘She may have more than one reason for dressing in that manner, and passing as the husband of the woman Watson, and I wish it was in my power to imprison her’ [...] ‘They always passed as man and wife; and more over, Chapman smokes; and whenever Watson gives her any offence, she beats her and blackens her eye.’].
1951		D.W. Cory Homosexual in America 142: It would have been a simple thing for these men to ‘pass’.
1979		Maledicta III:2 236: Drag queens [...] assert real freedom must mean freedom for the wildest people, not merely those who wish to conform, to pass.
2003		K. Cage Gayle.

3. (Aus.) to pawn stolen goods [SE pass on/over].

1915

Bulletin (Sydney) 5 Aug. 47/2: There, in ’is ’and, was some rings an’ other hangings of a flash cliner. Good stuff it was, too! [...] ‘’Arf’s yours if you’ll pass ’em for me,’ he says.

4. (S.Afr.) to deal illicit drugs.

1960

D. Lytton Goddam White Man 71: Passing is passing the dagga which people smoke. Lots of money in that business.

5. (US campus) to become unconscious (from drink or drugs) [SE pass out].

1982

W. Safire What’s The Good Word? 304: If I do too much brew, I’ll get wicked-faced, boot, and maybe even pass.

In phrases

pass up (v.)

see sense 1 above.

SE in slang uses

In phrases

pass a sham saint (v.)

to play the hypocrite.

1709

N. Ward Secret Hist. of Clubs 303: How to file a Drunken Cully; Sweeten an Old Letcher; Whedle a constant Customer [...] and how to pass at once a Sham-Saint and a Maidenhead upon a loose Quaker.

pass for grass (v.) [the ‘invisibility’ of grass]

(W.I., Guyn.) to be treated disrespectfully, to be someone who does not matter.

1996

Allsopp Dict. Carib. Eng. Usage.

pass in (v.) [pass in one’s checks under check n.¹]

(Aus.) to die.

1900

Bulletin (Sydney) 8 Sept. 15/1: Recently ‘passed-in’ at Kurrajong, N.S.W., William John [...] aged a trifle over the century.

pass (someone) one (v.)

(Aus.) to punch, to slap.

1901		W.A. Sun. Times (Perth) 13 Oct. 1/1: During the inky interval a well known bookmaker attempted to fondle his fiancee [and] having cuddled the wrong kleiner in the gloaming he was ‘passed one’.
1906		Punch (Melbourne) 27 Sept. 4/2: her goal-kicker wanted ter tike ther ball ‘ome and show it to ‘is tart to let ‘er see ‘e ‘ad touched it; ‘e wudn’t drop it, so Baldy passed ‘im one, as fair a bump’s I ever seen.
1916		C.J. Dennis Songs of Sentimental Bloke 86: I wish’t I ’ad ’im ’ere to deal wiv now! / I’d pass ’im one, I would! ’E ain’t no man!
1924		G.H. Lawson Dict. Aust. Words n.p.: PASS ONE - To deliver a punch.
1947		N. Lindsay Halfway to Anywhere 106: ‘By cripes, you got a hide, reckoning I ought to miss passing that bloke one because you’re struck on Polly Tanner’.

pass oneself (v.) [? abbr. SE surpass]

(Ulster) to behave as expected.

1997

Share Slanguage.

pass oneself out (v.)

(Aus.) to commit suicide.

1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 15 Dec. 10/1: Then – poor man – he went home, gave his last pay to his wife, and passed himself out.
1905		Bulletin (Sydney) 3 Aug. 12/2: The average bush-worker says, from sheer force of habit, that drowning is a comfortable way of passing yourself out.
1912		Bulletin (Sydney) 7 Nov. 16/4: There an unfortunate, full up of life, took matters into his own hands and passed himself out.

pass out (v.)

1. (Aus.) to disqualify.

1900

Bulletin (Sydney) 26 May 24/2: M.L. League of Wheelmen made a beautiful bungle over the disqualification of Sutherland, picked to go to Paris and ‘passed out’ for demanding ‘appearance-money’ from two sport bodies.

2. (Aus.) to knock out.

1903		Bulletin (Sydney) 2 July 36/2: I told ’im ’ow they useter go through blokes for their gilt, an’ showed ’im where one passed me out with a bottle be’ind the ear.
1906		E. Dyson ‘The Fat Girl’ in Fact’ry ’Ands 151: He promised to show Feathers a ‘boshter knack for passing out gazobs’.
1910		L. Esson Woman Tamer in Ballades of Old Bohemia (1980) 62: You’re all talk. Bongo Williams got nine months for topping off a mob o’ Chows with a bottle. He passed out four of them.

3. vi, to die.

1916		Friends of France 209: My first question was: ‘Comment ça va avec le capitaine ce matin?’ All she could say was ‘Fini.’ He had passed out a short time before I got there.
1921		D.L. Sayers Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1977) 37: There’s a bit of a muddle about the exact minute when the old boy passed out.
1925		(con. WWI) Fraser & Gibbons Soldier and Sailor Words 220: Pass Out, To: To die.
1931		P.J. Wolfson Bodies are Dust (2019) [ebook] ‘I got a weak heart and I’ll pass out in the pen’.
1934		R. Baker Penal Battalion 254: ‘I am to be shot [...] A Spanish priest will visit me the evening before I pass out’.
1947		E. Condon We Called It Music 244: When the operation was finished I was wheeled into the deathroom, a small cubicle where a man can pass out without bothering his fellow ward patients.

4. to fall asleep, usu. as a result of drink or drugs.

1927		W.R. Morse ‘Stanford Expressions’ in AS II:6 277: passed out—intoxicated; failed.
1932		J.A. Shidler ‘More Stanford Expressions’ in AS VII:6 436: A drunkard is a ‘funnel,’ ‘tank,’ ‘blotter,’ or ‘sponge’; he ‘passes out’.
1939		Howsley Argot: Dict. of Und. Sl.
1984		C. White Life and Times of Little Richard 151: He stayed up till about ten and then we’d all pass out together.
1997		C. Hiaasen Lucky You 247: A glue-sniffing kidnapper, passed out with one hand dangling.

5. vtr. to kill.

1939

T. Victor From the Abyss to the Foreign Legion 237: He would beg and pray of me—with tears streaming down his face—to give him just a half glass of water, or all his money (he had two thousand francs) for enough morphine to pass him out.

pass someone one (v.)

see give someone one under one n.¹

pass the bone (v.)

(US campus) to share experience, to pass on information.

1997–2000

Da Bomb 🌐 21: Pass the bone: Sharing one’s knowledge and past experiences with someone else.

pass the compliment (v.)

to give a tip.

1890–1904

Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

pass the pikes (v.) [SE turnpike, a toll gate; villains who had passed this barrier might presume themselves free of effective pursuit]

to be out of danger.

1621		R. Sanderson sermon 24 Apr. in Works II 45: Neither John’s mourning nor Christ’s piping can pass the pikes.
1648		R. Herrick ‘His Cavalier’ Hesperides 31: This a virtuous man can doe, / Saile against Rocks, and split them too: / I! and a world of Pikes passe through.
1660		J. Tatham The Rump IV i: Stand here and admire; You are beholding to me, I have past the pikes to meet you, and swet for’t.
1675		J. Hacket Transfig. (3rd Ser.) n.p.: There were many pikes to be passed through, a complete order of afflictions to be undergone [F&H].
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: To pass the Pikes, to be out of Danger.
1725		New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698].

pass the sleep medicine (v.)

(US) to knock out.

1913

J. London Valley of the Moon (1914) 168: He’s just a big stiff. I’ve seen ’m fight, an’ I can pass him the sleep medicine just as easy.