Leiter Reports: A Philosophy Blog

News and views about philosophy, the academic profession, academic freedom, intellectual culture, and other topics. The world’s most popular philosophy blog, since 2003.

  1. Fool's avatar
  2. Santa Monica's avatar
  3. Charles Bakker's avatar
  4. Matty Silverstein's avatar
  5. Jason's avatar
  6. Nathan Meyvis's avatar
  7. Stefan Sciaraffa's avatar

    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

“Passed away” vs. “died”

Brian Leiter

A longtime reader, noting my not infrequent use of "passed away" to note the death of some philosopher, writes:

“Passed away” is a religious euphemism, mostly used by sanctimonious and smarmy people who are trying to say that someone's immortal soul has passed away from our contemptible fallen realm and into the bright realm of harp-strumming above. 

It’s sort of Expiration Lite, or exiting from life without actually going through the messy process of death. It’s a way of denying reality. And that’s why it surprised me so much to see it on your blog, where reality-deniers usually get no mercy.

This was honestly a surprise to me (those who pass away, pass away into oblivion and nothingness!), but it would not be the first time I was tuned out of connotations of ordinary usage.  What do readers think?

Leave a Reply to Thomas Gallanis Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

49 responses to ““Passed away” vs. “died””

  1. s. wallerstein

    I don't live in the U.S. and I am be out of it as to current English usage.

    However, every time a person dies, there are people who are emotionally affected by that, sometimes grievously.

    So I would use "pass away" because I don't want "to rub it in" to those who are going through the mourning experience.

    Sure, "pass away" is a euphemism, but having lost close family members, including a son, I empathize with the grief of those close to the person "who is no longer with us" and try to ease the pain.

    Reply
  2. tyler

    I think this is why people don't like humanities professors.

    Reply
  3. Howard Simmons

    It's a substantive philosophical question whether the end of one's body is the end of one's life, despite the fact that materialism is currently so much in vogue. But even if that wasn't my view, I don't think I'd object to 'passed away' as a gentler alternative to 'died'.

    Reply
  4. Timothy Hamilton

    I grew up in the US South (even suffered briefly from the Jesus Virus) and am not without sensitivity to language. "Passed away" has never had a religious connotation for me. I have always understood it as a euphemism.

    There is a tendency to conflate older, previous meanings and uses with contemporary uses & meanings. Past reasons to do something may not be the reason for the same thing today. Even atheists capitalize God, even if only to show respect for the dead.

    Reply
  5. Howard

    There is something gentle about "pass away" and something violent about "die"
    People don't "pass away"in war or from violence- they "die"
    Die is more violent and more honest

    Reply
  6. Arian

    George Carlin being apt:

    https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx9eusWZP3-K0Re8Jz-8ppZgV6SH2TJSgT

    Reply
  7. Thomas Gallanis

    See Nancy Mitford’s famous essay “The English Aristocracy.” “Died” is U (upper class). “Passed on” or “passed away” is non-U. The upper class disliked euphemisms and preferred directness. In a similar vein, “Pardon?” is non-U; “What?” is U.

    Reply
  8. Dean C. Rowan

    This seems to be a case where everybody is right. I agree both that it's a euphemism often motivated by anxiety, but also a respectful way to acknowledge grief without "rubbing it in." By the way, "euphemism" is itself a euphemism…for "bullshit."

    OED supports multiple usages. On the one hand, "to pass away" = "In early use: (of a person's soul or life) to depart from the body. Later: (of a person) to die." On the other hand, "Of a thing: to cease to exist; to perish or disappear; to be dissolved." And many more.

    I often struggle with choosing which expression to use, "pass away" or "die." When my parents died I said as much. When the family members of others die, I am more likely to resort to "pass away," pace s. wallerstein. Funny, but when my peers and I note the passing, er, death of the artists we have venerated all our lives–musicians, poets, etc.–we typically resort in shorthand to "RIP." So, "Ronnie Spector, RIP." How's that for euphemism?

    Reply
  9. Alex Gezerlis

    Brian, your respondent is probably conflating the usage of "pass away" with that of "pass on"; the latter certainly does have a religious denotation.

    Reply
  10. Christopher Morris

    Increasingly common, and devoid of religious meaning, is “so-and-so passed”, with the “away” dropped. I find this somewhat peculiar but amusing — and w/o any significance.

    Reply
  11. Mike DePaul

    Purely my personal opinion, but "pass away" does not call anything religious to my mind. Like Brian, I think "pass away" could easily mean pass into oblivion. One the other hand, I think "pass on" does suggest to me that the deceased has passed on to something.

    Reply
  12. Fritz

    If someone's being smarmy or sanctimonious here, it isn't you.

    Reply
  13. Phil

    Never really thought about it, but I think I like "passed away" precisely because it's so vague – someone's gone *from here*, but where they've gone *to* is just… 'away'. The distinction between "passed away" and "passed on" is very much on point.

    Reply
  14. Phil G.

    You could use "kicked the bucket" instead.

    Reply
  15. Phil G.

    P.S. I think your longtime reader may be confusing "passed away" with "passed on". The latter is a religious euphemism, the former is not.

    Reply
  16. Dean C. Rowan

    "Shuffle off this mortal coil"
    "Meet your maker"
    "Push up daisies"

    Reply
  17. Mark Capustin

    Of course it's a reality denying (perhaps it may be better to say "reality softening") euphemism – because reality can be harsh and sometimes it is appropriate to be slightly less harsh in our expression of it. Is this long time reader's idea that if a euphemism implies an ontological error, you ought not use it, etiquette be damned? This sounds like an example of someone not understanding the language game that is appropriate for the circumstance (here I'd say we can glean useful insights from Wittgenstein even if he fails to understand evolution!).

    Reply
  18. Kent

    I'm with Tyler on this. And of course that's only a half-step away from "this is why Trump got elected." 🙂

    Reply
  19. Mike DePaul

    I think what I wrote before goes for not only myself but also what many others now hear, as other comments indicate. But I did a little checking and read that early on (1400s) when "pass away" was first used it was commonly thought that when a person died the soul did not immediately depart, but "passed away" on its journey to the next life sometime later. Clear religious connotation there, or at least an implication of a soul surviving death. But of course this does not settle the question as to whether many people now take "pass away" to suggest anything religious.

    Reply
  20. s. wallerstein

    There's nothing you can say to someone passing through the mourning process which will make them merry.

    However, those who mourn tend to be ultra-sensitive and to notice when you are making an effort, even a verbally clumsy or maladroit effort, to comfort them and when you don't care enough to make that effort.

    That small effort means something to someone who is going through an often traumatic experience. It makes the world a little bit less "cruel".

    So if you care enough about the person mourning to want to reach them on some level, choose what you say to them carefully. It's just not the moment to play Sam Harris and slam through the fact (that I recognize as well as most readers here, I can see) that after someone is dead, they're a corpse rotting in a box.

    Reply
  21. Michael

    I like this. Wittgenstein said somewhere, "Don't, for Heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense!"

    Also, re. "passed on"/"passed away" – If we're aiming for strict ontological correctness, "passed away" may be suspect, too. "Away" seems elliptical for "away from here, to some other place." (As in "Go away!" or "The birds flew away"; not so much "My cold went away.") So, I'm trying to imagine how we'd do a Quine-style rendering of "Socrates died in 399 BC": "For all x, if x exists after 399 BC, it is not the case that x socratizes"…?

    Dropping the silliness, s. wallerstein is clearly right.

    Reply
  22. Gary Kemp

    Here in the UK of late, you say they 'sadly died'. This form of words carries a presupposition…

    Reply
  23. Howard

    I would guess is that this restrained language matches the politically correct language with the exception of certain corners of the internet. The N-word is taboo as are other curse words. Plus there is a real sense that people are sheltered from everyday life in a way, including the darker side of life and the rowdier as well. This has to do with rationalization, I think Weber's

    Reply
  24. Charles Pigden

    I'm with your correspondent Brian. I think 'passed away' is a euphemistic evasion and found your use of the terms surprising (though this is obviously no biggie). I don't think I would say 'passed away' myself unless perhaps talking to a recently bereaved person who was not in the habit of frank speech.
    I have recently been researching my ancestry and in addition to an uncle who was killed (during the Pakistani/Indian partition) I have two who died in infancy. Those little boys did not 'pass away' in in infancy. They died..

    Reply
  25. Mark

    I agree completely with your reader. "Die" is not rubbing it in. On the contrary, it is simple, direct, and accurate. Nor does "passed away" soften the blow. Having recently lost a loved one, I can tell you that the phrase "passed away," though obviously well intended, grates on me, perhaps because it implies that my sensibilities are too fragile to hear the word "die" or "death." Obituary writers have never felt the need to be euphemistic. See, for example, this obit headline in today's NYT: "Blake Hounshell, ‘On Politics’ Editor at The Times, Dies at 44." I avoid "passed away," and I recommend that you do the same.

    Reply
  26. Mark Capustin

    I'm pretty sure the use of "passed away" predates any contemporary notions of political correctness. The connections being drawn here strike me as spurious (with "spurious" being a euphemism for "asinine", lest I unnecessarily shelter anyone).

    Reply
  27. John Fischer

    I would distinguish "passed away," "passed on," and "passed." "Passed away" seems to be equivalent to "died," on the secular conception of "died." "Passed on" and "passed" seem to connote "passing through," and not going out of existence. These then suggest a religious or after-life presupposition.

    But, of course, the terms are used flexibly and not precisely.

    Reply
  28. Shane

    I am a registered nurse. Have been present when numerous people have died. Have put numerous in post-mortem bags (body bags). We were trained to, generally speaking, say that someone had died and not to use terms such as "didn't make it" or "passed away."

    However, there is an art to it. There are no absolute rules in such a situation.

    I think there is quite a bit of talking about what it's like to be in a foxhole without ever having been there.

    Reply
  29. Robert C Hockett

    I've long been surprised and disappointed that a thinker as acute and unsentimental as K. Marx, in a widely read preface, saw fit to describe himself and F. Engels as having 'abandoned [a] manuscript to the gnawing criticism of … mice.' The effective endorsement of prescientific conceptions of rodent cognition, latent in the suggestion that mice might ever have been capable of 19th century German style 'critique,' perhaps pleases some lovers or purveyors of children's literature (a Robert C. O'Brien, for example), but it amounts to a cowardly evasion of hard truths unbefitting a critical intelligence like Marx's. Sure, some will attempt to excuse Dr. Marx on the putative ground that the turn of phrase was a mere façon de parler, commonly meant to lighten otherwise heavy reading much as expressions like 'passed away' are commonly meant to lighten heavy burdens of lost consortium. But as we are learning from advocates of 'safe spaces' at public speaking events, words matter. Metaphors, meanwhile, lie; and honest folk speak only literally when speaking at all, be it of rodent diets or of bodies like Joh Brown's that still lie a'moldering in the grave.

    Reply
  30. Eric

    This conversation is far too preoccupied with etymology. Even if we grant that some religious origin or connotation is present, there are plenty of ways in which historically religious language is used in secular contexts. Saying, "fell from grace," "moved by the spirit" or "saw the light," does not commit one to any metaphysics.

    Reply
  31. Reality Accepter

    Good points. We should also stop saying “goodbye” since it’s a contraction of “God be with you.”

    Reply
  32. Andrew Sepielli

    Ugh! I'm sitting here with "link to unfunny Bill Hicks clip" on my bingo card. Soooo close!

    Reply
  33. Dean C. Rowan

    Jeff Beck has left the building: https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/jeff-beck-one-of-the-guitar-masters-of-the-rock-era-dies-at-78/ar-AA16en13

    Reply
  34. Cora Diamond

    The first time I read the word “disparu” to mean died, I was totally puzzled. She disappeared??
    In Scotland, I was told that a neighbor was “awa”-and that too was mystifying. He was away?
    But think also of the familiar use of “gone”. The dead person, after all, hasn’t gone anywhere.

    Reply
  35. Allen Hazen

    Phil G (#15) points to the distinction between "pass on" and "pass away," saying the former has religious connotations the latter lacks. Another idiom simply uses "pass," with no modifier, in place of "die." I think my personal preference (the word I used when I recently wrote to family members about a death (or passing?) in the extended family) is "die," but to object to someone's choice of terminology would strike me as silly and insensitive. The death of someone close to you (or of someone you like or admire) has an emotional impact, and focusing on the word used in reporting it seems a distraction: better to be open to (and if appropriate supportive toward) the emotional experience of the person reporting.

    Reply
  36. V. Alan White

    Well, if you're a retired boomer like me, then you read obits. And almost none use "died" due to the eulogistic context: today's paper had about a dozen, and all used "passed away" or the like except for one "died", and that was a physician's obit. This indicates that that word has direct unvarnished force, as when one attempts to say dramatically (and wrongly) "I died on the table three times." I've wondered if I submitted my own in-your-face obit "yesterday Alan awoke to the burning flames of hell" whether a paper would publish it, despite the fact that, if we were to take traditional Christianity seriously, then the major of obits should read that way. "Passed away" is to my mind the least value-laden euphemism that is socially acceptable, because that leaves the reader to say where "away" is, and I, like Brian, think that is into memory at best, and for almost all of us bereft of historical significance, ultimately total oblivion, like my ancestors inaccessible to even my best genealogical probing.

    Reply
  37. Warren Goldfarb

    @ Cora Diamond. And I have found it amusing that in some English-speaking African countries, they use "late" as a predicate adjective. A Botswanan once said to me, "I had a favorite math teacher in school. Sadly, he is late."

    Reply
  38. Rollo Burgess

    Personally I'm with Nancy Mitford as referred to by Thomas Gallanis above. Euphemisms suck; the old English aristocracy had many vices and deficiencies but plain speaking was one of their virtues!

    Of course one should be sensitive and tactful to the bereaved, and we are all bereaved sometimes, but I don't see why a bereaved person would be made any sadder by use of the straightforward terminology (certainly I never have been).

    Reply
  39. Derek Bowman

    What funny timing for this discussion. I've been saying this constantly since my mom's passing last week. I certainly would not find it hard or cruel for someone to tell me that she died, but in my head it seems much too harsh a thing to casually lay on others, even those who never knew her, who must bear the weight of receiving the news of my family's loss.

    I agree with those above that "passed away" has the virtue of being agnostic about whether the person has passed to anywhere else.

    And in my mom's case it feels like an apt description of her gentle transition from breathing to not breathing, from being there in the room to being gone. And it has felt to me a rather natural expression of my linguistic habits, not an effort to hide from a harsh reality that could not be hidden from the bereaved in any case.

    Reply
  40. David Zimmerman

    … and plucked his last chord.

    Reply
  41. Walther Ellis

    I view 'passed away' as a more respectful, and perhaps more gentle, way to note that someone has died. Other languages make a similar distinction. For example, there is a difference between sterben and versterben in German.

    Reply
  42. Peter

    I am pretty happy with 'passed away' and I am not exactly a fan of religion. But of course there may be cultural contexts where the expression does have that connotations your reader holds it to have. I do remember someone years ago illustrating a difference between the British and Americans with the following exchange.

    American "I am sorry to hear that you had to bury your wife"

    British "I had to, old boy. She was dead"

    Reply
  43. Murcy

    The death of pets is said to prepare us for that of family, but we don't speak of Mom as having been adopted by a farmer upstate.

    Reply
  44. Karen Bennett

    My parents found it amusing when I used the *other* sense of 'late' as an *attributive* adjective in a short story I wrote as a kid. I said something like, "she turned the corner and bumped into the late Mr. Smith."

    Reply
  45. Dean C. Rowan

    An enduring joke, here cut-and-pasted from one of its many iterations online:

    A man left his cat with his brother while he went on vacation for a week. When he came back, he called his brother to see when he could pick the cat up. The brother hesitated, then said, "I'm so sorry, but while you were away, the cat died."
    The man was very upset and yelled, "You know, you could have broken the news to me better than that. When I called today, you could have said he was on the roof and wouldn't come down. Then when I called the next day, you could have said that he had fallen off and the vet was working on patching him up. Then when I called the third day, you could have said he had passed away."
    The brother thought about it and apologized.
    "So how's Mom?" asked the man.
    "She's on the roof and won't come down."

    Reply
  46. Francesco Ademollo

    In 1926 Harold Joachim, then Wykeham Professor of Logic in Oxford, translated the title of Aristotle's _De generatione and corruptione_ as _On Coming-To-Be and Passing-Away_. How smarmy and sanctimonious of him to try to smuggle in the notion that all substances, even the inanimate ones, down to the four elements, cease to exist only to move somewhere else! And what should we think of that unctuous, mealy-mouthed "coming-to-be"? Where are they supposed to _come_ from exactly, eh? Luckily we are not so gullible.

    Reply
  47. Luke

    From my time working with doctors and other clinicians as a clinical ethics consultant, I will say that many seem to prefer 'die' and its cognates to 'passed away,' as they seem to feel it is more direct and (perhaps for that reason) can help people begin to move into and (hopefully) through the grieving process. Of course, this is merely anecdotal.

    Reply
  48. Shane

    I'm a registered nurse, and like I said above, we are trained to speak this way. But, one must realize we're also in the place of healer-scientist. Using "died" is both a scientific habit (death is something that must to be clinically pronounced) and, yes, a general rule-of-thumb for not mincing words with family members about what is actually going on.

    On the other hand, I am sure I have used other terms with patient families (and they have with me). There is a large part of context, art, and individual circumstance involved. I think that's what some of the blanket statements above are missing.

    I won't say anymore unless asked, as I run the risk of sullying my patients' memories for internet-clout.

    Reply
  49. Justin E. H. Smith

    This is definitely a folksy way of putting things, and has its ultimate origins in the popular representation of the vital principle of the human body as a sort of subtle vapor or gas. Several Indo-European languages, spoken by cultures that share this common representation, use similar euphemisms for both dying and farting. “To pass” in this sense is to pass “out of* the body, not necessarily into a heavenly afterlife, but at least into the surrounding atmosphere, where you can then haunt your survivors as a foul and intangible presence. When I want to suggest these popular connotations, I also use “to pass”. When my goal is to speak straight, I always say “to die”.

    —–
    KEYWORDS:
    Primary Blog

    Reply

Designed with WordPress