Dictionary

passant en · ADJ

Pronunciation

• /ˈpæsənt/
• /pəˈsɑnt/ hyperforeign
• (US) audio

Etymology

From Middle English passaunt (c. 1300), from Old French passant.

Meanings

1. (not-comparable, of a four-legged animal) Walking, usually to the right, and looking straight ahead with the right forepaw raised from the ground.
   • He them espying, gan himselfe prepare, / And on his arme addresse his goodly shield / That bore a Lion passant in a golden field. 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:
   • The official blazon of the arms of Perth is "Gules, a Holy Lambe passant regardant staff and cross argent, with the banner of St. Andrew proper, all within a double tressure counter-flowered of the second": […]. 1956 July, Col. H. C. B. Rogers, “Railway Heraldry”, in Railway Magazine, page 480:
2. (not-comparable, obsolete) Currently in use; in vogue.
   • Many opinions are passant concerning the basilisk, or little king of serpents, commonly called the cockatrice [...]. 1646, Sir Thomas Browne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica, III.7:

Forms

Coordinates

courant · statant

Deriveds

counterpassant

Relateds

en passant

Translations (1)

fi kävelevä (heraldry: walking)