Lived in Scotland for eight years. Never heard of it.
can we get a nine here?
English born and bred, never heard of it.
There is a song by Edward Elgar called Is she not passing fair?, which seems to be the same usage. Dictionary.com agrees with you, according to sense 6 of the first definition.
I wonder if Irishgirl, Pushkin or any other Nordie dopers is familiar with the term.
American. Never heard it, and wouldn’t have guessed the meaning.
The thoughts that were running through my head were either “a REALLY good Backstage Pass” or “an amazing (American) Football play”
Irish and I know it well. I also thought it was something that was well known elsewhere. Interesting.
The OP never actually explained what his phrase meant. Maybe it means “very remarkable”.
Sorry,
from wiktionary
Adjective
-
(pejorative, Scottish, Northern Irish English) Of a person, making belittling or snide remarks.
Stop being so pass-remarkable.
from the BBC
Pass-remarkable - means critical or judgmental, always ready to pass critical remarks. as in: “You’re awful pass-remarkable, so you are.”
The only thing that I could think of was Terry Bradshaw to Franco Harris, as in “wasn’t that pass remarkable”?
Jeez, I lived in Scotland and Northern Ireland and have never heard the term. Mind you, I was a wee lad when I came to Canada, but my parents still hung around with a lot of Scottish and Irish ex-pats and the term never came up.
Yep, another American who’s never heard it, and I wouldn’t have guessed the meaning. I thought it might be “very remarkable” or “beyond remarkable” (past -> “pass”), along the lines of “passing strange” and “passing fair” as mentioned upthread.
I’ve certainly heard “making a remark in passing” or “making a passing remark”. Those are pretty common phrases here. But to me, neither of them have an inherently negative connotation. They just mean an offhand comment, or possibly a non sequitur. For example, my coworker might walk by my office, and remark in passing, “Hey, good job on those TPS reports!” Or, my friend might make a passing remark about hating cilantro while we’re chatting about our favorite restaurants.
The thing is, now that I know the meaning, I still don’t quite get it - I’d think that if someone is “pass-remarkable”, then they’re the subject of these snippy comments. The person making them should be “pass-remarking”, or “a real pass-remarker”, or something.
English, never heard of it.
I’m 50+ and lived in Scotland most of my life; never heard the term used at all.
Maybe it’s a west coast thing.
Dutch, but lived in the Republic of Ireland (Co. Clare) for eight years and have never heard it.
I’ve heard it, it was used by some students from Belfast who were here taking their gap, I had to ask what it meant, they actually had a hard time explaining it. We were pissed, of course.
English, lived in Ireland for 10 years, never heard of it.
Scottish, never heard of it.
Indeed.
I was very surprised when I found out that only Irish people use the term “to give out” e.g. If you do that your mother will give out to you.
It means to reprimand BTW.
It’s a term that every Irish person would be very familiar with but it blew me away when I found out that it was a Irish thing as I assumed it was a common English term that at the very least British people would know but I was met with confused looks when I first used it around Brits.
Really? That’s mad. I’m very surprised you and PookahMacPhellimey never heard it.
Irish, more or less, know it and love it, but I kind of figured no one else would have a clue what it meant. I’m actually kind of surprised it’s used in Scotland - I thought it was exclusively Irish (maybe even exclusively Dublin).
Looking at the Google hits for “pass remarkable” I wonder if the pass is related to passive-aggressive.