QUICK! HELP - IN YEARS PASSED OR PAST!

Need quick help guys,

Is it "in years past" or "in years passed"

What do you think?

 

I'd say years past, but I am mildly drunk so take that for what it is worth.

 

OK, Superfly,

Let's assume you're trying to describe how something was done prior to now, as in, in the PAST. "In years past, this board still got ridiculous amounts of hits and an inordinate amount of new threads every day."
Another thing I do sometimes if I get confused on a saying is to google that saying, within quotes. If one comes back with an overwhelmingly higher number of results, that's usually the right phrasing.
In your case, the phrase "in years past" came back with over a million, and "in years passed" came back with less than 12,000. So there you go. Sleep easy

 

When in doubt, go with "in years Pabst."
Not correct in either syntax or grammer, but guaranteed to get a smirk.

 

"Years ago . . . "

Saves a word, sounds less textbookish.

 

Unless years have died, it's years past.

 

Thanks for the responses guys. Went with past. Still not comfortable with the statement though. It seems logical to me that it would be "in years passed by"...but I guess not. Appreciate the help...

 

I think this one is correct, as well.

 

Not entirely applicable

Hook and Lateral comes up with 1,080,000 hits
Hook and Lateral football comes up with 205,000 hits
Hook and Ladder comes up with 1,210,000 hits
Hook and Ladder football comes up with 458,000

All intent and purpose comes up with 11,200,000,hits
All intensive purpose comes up with 11,900,000 hits

 

That's good stuff....especially "intensive purpose" showing up more.

 

HAHAH intensive purpose...come on now...

On a side note, my friend told me he was the "predominant writer in the office." Predominant.

It took a little correction to remind him who the preeminent writer actually was...

 

Slappy, good point. Hence my use of the terms "overwhelmingly higher number of results" being "usually the right saying," rather than stating, "The one that comes back with the highest number is always right. It's 100 percent foolproof, believe me."

I've had it come back where two phrasings both had high or similar results, just as you showed above; for anything that had relatively low ratios between the two possibilities (perhaps even up to 10-1), I just check other sources to back it up. With "in years past," really, it didn't even require searching -- but just for grins, I did, and the ratio was "overwhelming" at nearly 96-1.

Just passing along a method that is sometimes (maybe even "usually") useful. Not always.