I Must Have Been Absent That Day

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Gee, when did the word “passed” replace “died”?    Is “passed away” or “passed on”to be perceived as an easier phrase for the bereaved to digest?

I don’t get it.  

Why then do we not hear the Media say, “Seven U.S. soliders “passed away” after their tank struck an IED on a Baghdad freeway?”

We never hear that ’107 passengers on an Aero Flot DC-10 “passed away” when the plane crashed near Minsk’.   Back when I spent hours behind a microphone, ’passed away’ was never the term du jour.  Someone was either (and most emphatically) dead or had died.  

Has actor and former Brat Packer Judd Nelson’s career “perished”?  

No, I feel certain his career DIED in the 90′s.

Earlier today, legendary 80′s teen angst film director, John Hughes died of a massive heart attack in New York.   He was in the park and  just collapsed.  He died;  was ‘passing’ involved here as much as a complete and total and damned near immediate shutdown?

Does anyone know how and when this phrase of passing become vogue?   Seriously, I’d like to know because I’m completely in the dark in terms of the differention here.

 

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