Little vs Passing - What's the difference?
little | passing | Synonyms |
Small in size.
Insignificant, trivial.
* {{quote-magazine, date=2013-06-21, author=
, volume=189, issue=2, page=30, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly)
, title= Very young.
(of a sibling) Younger.
* 1871 October 18, The One-eyed Philosopher [pseudonym], "Street Corners", in Judy: or the London serio-comic journal , volume 9, page 255 [http://books.google.com/books?id=_B4oAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA255]:
* 2004 , Barry Miles, Zappa: A Biography , 2005 edition, ISBN 080214215X, page 5:
Small in amount or number, having few members.
Short in duration; brief.
Small in extent of views or sympathies; narrow; shallow; contracted; mean; illiberal; ungenerous.
* Tennyson
Not much.
:
*
*:Little disappointed, then, she turned attention to "Chat of the Social World," gossip which exercised potent fascination upon the girl's intelligence. She devoured with more avidity than she had her food those pretentiously phrased chronicles of the snobocracy […] distilling therefrom an acid envy that robbed her napoleon of all its savour.
Not at all.
:
*
*:But then I had the [massive] flintlock by me for protection. ¶, and a 'bead' could be drawn upon Molly, the dairymaid, kissing the fogger behind the hedge, little dreaming that the deadly tube was levelled at them.
*{{quote-news, year=2012, date=May 13, author=Alistair Magowan, work=BBC Sport
, title= Not much, only a little: only a small amount (of).
That passes away; ephemeral.
* 1814 , (Lord Byron), Lara , I.15:
* 2010 , Marianne Kirby, The Guardian , 21 Sep 2010:
* Shakespeare
* 1835 , (Washington Irving), The Crayon Miscellany :
* 1847 , Robert Holmes, The Case of Ireland Stated :
vague, cursory.
* 2011 , Stewart J Lawrence, The Guardian , 14 Jun 2011:
going past - passing cars.
* 1813 , (Percy Bysshe Shelley), Queen Mab , I:
* 2010 , Simon Hattenstone, The Guardian , 30 Oct 2010:
Death, dying; the end of something.
The fact of going past; a movement from one place to another or a change from one state to another.
* (Oliver Onions), The Story of Louie
(legal) The act of approving a bill etc.
(sports) The act of passing a ball etc. to another player.
A form of juggling where several people pass props between each other, usually clubs or rings.
Little is a synonym of passing.
As a proper noun little
is .As a verb passing is
.As an adjective passing is
that passes away; ephemeral.As an adverb passing is
.As a noun passing is
death, dying; the end of something.little
English
(wikipedia little)Adjective
Chico Harlan
Japan pockets the subsidy …, passage=Across Japan, technology companies and private investors are racing to install devices that until recently they had little interest in: solar panels. Massive solar parks are popping up as part of a rapid build-up that one developer likened to an "explosion."}}
- If you want to find Little' France, take any turning on the north side of Leicester square, and wander in a zigzag fashion Oxford Streetwards. The ' Little is rather smokier and more squalid than the Great France upon the other side of the Manche.
- In the forties, hurdy-gurdy men could still be heard in all those East Coast cities with strong Italian neighbourhoods: New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston. A visit to Baltimore's Little Italy at that time was like a trip to Italy itself.
- a little sleep
- The long-necked geese of the world that are ever hissing dispraise, / Because their natures are little .
Usage notes
Some authorities regard both littler' and '''littlest''' as non-standard. The OED says of the word little: "''the adjective has no recognized mode of comparison. The difficulty is commonly evaded by resort to a synonym (as smaller, smallest); some writers have ventured to employ the unrecognized forms littler, littlest, which are otherwise confined to dialect or imitations of childish or illiterate speech.''" The forms '''lesser''' and ' least are encountered in animal names such as lesser flamingo and least weasel.Antonyms
* (small) large, big * (young) big * (younger) bigAdverb
Sunderland 0-1 Man Utd, passage=But as United saw the game out, little did they know that, having looked likely to win their 13th Premier League title, it was City who turned the table to snatch glory from their arch-rivals' grasp.}}
Antonyms
* muchDeterminer
- There is little water left.
- We had very little to do.
Usage notes
* is used with uncountable nouns, few with plural countable nouns.Antonyms
* (not much) muchpassing
English
Verb
(head)Adjective
(en adjective)- And solace sought he none from priest nor leech, / And soon the same in movement and in speech / As heretofore he fill'd the passing hours
- It might be possible to dismiss
- dittowatch as just another passing internet fancy. After all, hashtags are ephemeral.
- her passing deformity
- It was by dint of passing strength, / That he moved the massy stone at length.
- That parliament was destined, in one short hour of convulsive strength, in one short hour of passing glory, to humble the pride and alarm the fears of England.
- Ardent pro-lifer Rick Santorum made one passing reference to "authenticity" as a litmus test for a conservative candidate, but if he was obliquely referring to Romney (and he was), you could be excused for missing the dig.
Adverb
(-)- One, pale as yonder waning moon, / With lips of lurid blue; / The other, rosy as the morn / When throned on ocean's wave, / It blushes o'er the world: / Yet both so passing wonderful!
- ‘I find it passing strange that convicts understand honest folk, but honest folk don't understand convicts.’
Usage notes
* This use is sometimes misconstrued as meaning "vaguely" or "slightly" (perhaps by confusion with such phrases as "passing fancy", under Adjective, above), leading to formations such as "more than passing clever" etc.Noun
- And since he did not see Louie by the folding door, Louie knew that in his former passings and repassings he could not have seen her either.