過去
Meaning in Englishpast, former time
Animated kanji stroke order
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Word context
What it means
過去 (kako) means "the past": the portion of time and events that precede the present moment, encompassing past actions, conditions, and periods that are finished or no longer current; it functions as a temporal noun to refer to what has already happened and as an abstract concept contrasting with the present and future.
Main meanings
- 1. As a grammatical concept referring to past-tense forms and constructions used to describe completed actions or states.
- 2. As an attributive idea meaning "former" or "previous" when qualifying people, conditions, or versions.
- 3. In psychology or literature to denote remembered experiences, memories, or what influences a person's present behavior.
- 4. In historical, legal, or administrative contexts to indicate prior records, precedents, or earlier periods under review.
How to use it
Used across registers: in everyday conversation to refer to someone's personal past, in grammar and textbooks to label past tense or forms, in news and academic writing to discuss historical events or prior data, and in formal documents to indicate previous records; it can appear alone as a noun, as part of compounds, and in set phrases to contrast with present or future contexts.
Variants and close terms
- 昔 (mukashi) — long ago, ancient times
- 以前 (izen) — before, previously
- 過去形 (kakokei) — past tense (grammatical term)
- 未来 (mirai) — future (antonym)
Composition
- 過 (ka) — to pass, to go beyond; carries the sense of passing by or exceeding.
- 去 (kyo/ko) — to leave, to go away; indicates departure or removal.
- Combined, the characters create the idea of what has been passed and left behind — together forming the concept of the past.
Origin
The compound 過去 arrived in Japanese as a Sino-Japanese (on-yomi) vocabulary taken from Classical Chinese usage; it has been used in written Japanese since early medieval periods in Buddhist, scholarly, and legal texts and was standardized in modern Japanese to express temporal distinctions in both everyday and academic language.
Word class
Noun (名詞)