pastness

noun

past·​ness ˈpas(t)-nəs 

1

: the quality or state of being past

2

: the subjective quality of something being remembered rather than immediately experienced

almost any popular record … is apt to be tinged with pastness

—Roy McMullen

Examples of pastness in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

This novel, hovering somewhere between the older epistolary structure and pure dramatic monologue—between correspondence and a playscript—becomes magically liberated from the more burdensome narrative machinery, that wheezing apparatus of persuasion and pastness. —James Wood, The New Yorker, 1 June 2020

The extraordinary pastness of our story results from its having taken place before a certain turning point, on the far side of a rift that has cut deeply through our lives and our consciousness. —David Treuer, The New York Review of Books, 6 July 2020

Word History

First Known Use

1829, in the meaning defined at sense 1