Translation
everywhere, in all directions; here and there
Examples
fugerunt.
The soldiers fled in all directions.
.
Bodies lay here and there in the fields.
inveniuntur.
These words are found all over the place.
.
They went this way and that through the city.
.
The report went everywhere among the peoples.
Passim is the adverb of passus, the perfect participle of pando, "spread out", so its root sense is "in a scattered way". Two meanings shade into each other: over the whole area, everywhere, and without order, at random. The second is doing the quiet work in a phrase like passim caedere, to kill indiscriminately, where "everywhere" would miss the point.
Scholarship borrowed it whole and unchanged. A citation marked passim means the thing is scattered through the work rather than sitting on one page, and English kept the Latin form and the Latin sense. The trap is a homograph two steps back: Latin has two identical participles passus, one from pando (behind passim, and behind passus, "a pace") and one from patior, "suffer", which is behind Passion and passive. Same spelling, unrelated verbs.
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passim: worksheet, infographic and listicle
Free printable study downloads for the Latin word "passim" (everywhere, in all directions; here and there): a worksheet with the answer key built in, an infographic, and a sentence listicle. Open any one to view, print or save.
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Start your free weekThis word is part of lesson 14.