passing

1. (literary or archaic) Surpassingly, greatly.Examples: "[...] for she was called a fair lady, and a passing wise, and her name was called Igraine."; "How wonderful is Death, / Death and his brother Sleep! / 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!"; "She's passing fair; but so demure is she / So quiet is her gown, so smooth her hair, […]"archaicliterarynot-comparable

1. (law) The act of approving a bill etc.Examples: "But capital was proving difficult to raise; rumours were in the air that the G.W.R. and L.S.W.R. were about to patch up their quarrel, and the people of Southampton, who twelve months earlier had staged a torch-light procession to celebrate the passing of the D.N.S.R. Act, were increasingly loath to part with their cash."countableuncountable

2. (sports) The act of passing a ball etc. to another player.countableuncountable

3. (sociology) The ability of a person to be regarded as a member of an identity group or category different from their own.Examples: "When there is a discrepancy between an individual's actual social identity and his virtual one, it is possible for this fact to be known to us before we normals contact him, or to be quite evident when he presents himself before us. He is a discredited person, and it is mainly he I have been dealing with until now. … However, when his differentness is not immediately apparent, and is not known beforehand, … he is a discreditable, not a discredited person …. The issue is … that of managing information about his failing. To display or not to display; to tell or not to tell; to let on or not to let on; to lie or not to lie; and in each case, to whom, how, when, and where. … It is this second general issue, the management of undisclosed discrediting information about self, that I am focusing on in these notes - in brief, 'passing'."countableuncountable