0 in or to a position that is further than a particular point: --
1 used to say what the time is when it is a particular number of minutes after an hour: --
2 used to refer to a period of time before and until the present: --
The prime minister's family have been instructed not to discuss his past life with the press.
I know from past experience that you can't judge by appearances.
In centuries/years past (= many centuries/years ago) even visiting the next village was considered a long journey.
He was the fifth climber to die on these mountains over the past two days.
The average temperature worldwide has risen by about one degree Fahrenheit in the past 100 years.
3 of the past tense: --
"Must" does not have a past form.
4 the period before and until, but not including, the present time: --
5 the form of a verb used to describe actions, events, or states that happened or existed before the present time: --
Anxiety about the relativist abyss in which 'all pasts are equal' has thwarted efforts to evaluate alternatives to 'objective science'.
People require pasts that enable them to make sense of the lives they are in.
The other reason is that these changes both occurred in contexts that were the products of contrasting pasts.
Memory books are structured and contain limited and always positive details of the residents' pasts.
The pasts to which they looked were different, however, and so were the lessons they drew from them.
Animals' mental representations of their pasts and their futures may or may not be functionally solipsistic, but their existence certainly extends beyond the here-and-now.
Figuration is about resetting the stage for possible pasts and futures.
However, this is arguably not normally the situation in relation to currently contested pasts.
