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Crossword clues for past

past
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
past
I.adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM OTHER ENTRIES
(a) quarter past (sth)British English (also (a) quarter after (sth) American English) (= 15 minutes after the hour)
▪ I’ll meet you at a quarter past ten.
be past your peak
▪ By the next Olympics, she will be past her peak.
bluff your way out of/through/past etc sb/sth (=go somewhere or succeed in doing something by deceiving someone)
▪ I hope we’ll be able to bluff our way past the guard.
colourful history/past/career/life
▪ Charlie Chaplin had a long and colorful career.
elbow your way through/past/into etc sth (=move through a group of people by pushing past them)
▪ He elbowed his way to the bar and ordered a beer.
in the dim and distant pasthumorous (= a long time ago)
▪ Back in the dim and distant past when I was at school, computers didn’t exist.
leave the past behind
▪ It’s time to leave the past behind.
living in the past (=imagining that things from the past are still happening)
▪ You must stop living in the past.
on present/current/past etc form
▪ On current form he’s one of the top three players in the country.
past catches up with
▪ At the end of the movie his murky past catches up with him.
past master
▪ She’s a past master at exploiting other people.
past midnight (=after midnight)
▪ By the time he arrived, it was well past midnight.
past participle
past perfect
past tense
past/previous experience
▪ His only previous experience of broadcasting consisted of a job hosting a local radio station.
past...prime
▪ He is now past his prime.
past...sell-by date
▪ This type of games console is starting to look well past its sell-by date.
past...sell-by date
▪ a yoghurt two days past its sell-by date
sb’s past errorsformal
▪ If we fail to learn from our past errors, we are doomed to repeat them.
the distant past/future (=a long time in the past/future)
▪ It is a fictional story set in the distant past.
▪ In the distant future, there may be a cure for the disease.
the past month
▪ They had come to know and like each other in the past month.
the past week
▪ Five soldiers were killed in the past week alone.
the past year
▪ Over the past year everyone has worked extremely hard.
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
century
▪ In past centuries these led to considerable artistry in the devising of labyrinths and mazes.
▪ Patterson's evidence plainly indicates that there has been a gradual swing away from front values in the past century or so.
▪ Knightly warfare, if it no longer enjoyed the supremacy of past centuries, was far from dead.
▪ Legacies Somerville has been enormously enriched over the past century by Somervillians remembering the College in their wills.
▪ But over the past century we have made it into a rubbish dump.
▪ In the past century the institutions and the external stimuli affecting the relation between finance and industry have been chopped and changed.
▪ The same new acoustic effect has been discovered repeatedly throughout the past century!
▪ This section begins by looking at the changing fate of old people during the past century as they have retired.
couple
▪ This criminal neglect has been particularly indefensible over the past couple of decades.
▪ I have seen this problem many times in the past couple of years when the summers have been very hot.
▪ In the past couple of decades, Britain has managed to slither from one high technology debacle to another.
▪ He'd had them on and off for the past couple of weeks.
▪ I can't believe how far I have come in the past couple of years.
▪ Certainly the petrochemicals industry as a whole has done very well in the past couple of years, and we with it.
▪ Encouragingly the past couple of months have seen an upturn in measured revenues.
▪ In the past couple of years, however, it has come bouncing back.
decade
▪ Unemployment has risen in virtually every western country in the past decade.
▪ On the other hand, the pace of counterurbanization has slowed considerably in the past decade.
▪ Psychoanalytic theory has probably been the single most important theoretical influence on the discipline of Art History over the past decade.
▪ Over the past decade, practitioners in neighbourhood or community-based teams have been developing closer relationships with the people they serve.
▪ Mature enough, in any case, to be recreating works from past decades for those who might have missed them.
▪ Hon. Members have referred to the increasing centralisation of government that has taken place, especially in the past decade.
▪ In the past decade, the number of jobs in Scotch Whisky companies has fallen by 40% from 26,000 to 15.
▪ Employee trusts Employee trusts have increased in popularity over the past decade or so as a method of providing incentives for employees.
experience
▪ What research has shown is that these tendencies to behave in certain ways are deeply embedded in past experiences.
▪ It's also to do with using your own past experiences to show empathy and understanding when others need it.
▪ We often ignore intuition, when it's possible that intuitive responses are our past experiences lodged in our unconscious minds.
▪ But Tess, in answer to your question, whatever you do, don't tell your future husband anything about your past experience.
▪ First, we sense the information and then we digest it through past experiences, attitudes, values and beliefs.
▪ The counsellor must also recognize that in returning to past experiences, there will be regrets and disappointments as well as joys and successes.
▪ They do not deny - indeed they insist - that what an animal does is influenced by past experiences as well as present ones.
▪ We delve deeply into the psyche for memories of past experience and sensation to judge any work of art.
history
▪ To this day a few of the fields around the village tell of its past history.
▪ Geschichte as Kähler used it refers to past history as such.
▪ Or strategies might be conditional upon the past history of the game.
▪ Eight patients had a past history of recurrent peptic ulcers or gastritis.
▪ Each creature has its own karma, its own personal mind patterns, derived from its own past history of previous lives.
▪ Through a major media campaign it is seeking to obtain funds by raising public awareness of the museum's past history.
▪ But all that was past history.
▪ Just for the sake of the past history.
life
▪ But there was no sign of Mr Hyde himself, although the police and the newspapers discovered a lot about his past life.
▪ I have a feeling that there is now more of my past life than my future.
▪ And I am aware of my past life.
▪ What do elderly people remember from their past lives?
▪ In reminiscence, you build up from past life to the present.
▪ He's casting around trying to find a way of presenting himself that's different from his past life.
▪ Surely Russell Bryant must have some sign on him of his past life, then?
▪ Health matters will usually come first, and then talk either of family news or of their past lives.
month
▪ The poll also shows the Tories have cut Labour's lead from nine to six points over the past month.
▪ The score belies the ferocious chessboard duel that we have witnessed over the past month and a half.
▪ The committee express their thanks for the work he has done in a voluntary capacity over the past months.
▪ The Sheldon family have spent the past month wondering why.
▪ The girls walked in the Rose Gardens and caught up on the past months, discussed the future.
▪ The past month has seen more violence and death than any of the student groups had anticipated.
▪ I fell into deceit quite easily, having got used to it over the past months.
week
▪ For when he checked through the inventory of pain that his body had become over the past weeks David found nothing.
▪ From there I went to the county records office in Chichester and that's where I've spent the past week.
▪ Its gon na be mighty difficult to find out info from past weeks.
▪ In the past week or so householders throughout the country have been opening their April water bills and gaping.
▪ When Airdrie went to Easter Road this past week, there were seven bookings and two Hibs players were ordered off.
▪ The organisation he had so painstakingly built up had successfully weathered several crises over the past week.
▪ To judge by the events of the past week, Michael Heseltine has now enrolled in the Nixon school.
year
▪ Sadly, though, we have in the past year been through the painful process of shedding a large number of jobs.
▪ Read in studio A group which has been juggling with fire for the past year is staging its first play.
▪ The updated catalogue includes new and revised modules developed over the past year.
▪ Research over the past years has begun to answer lots of questions, but much still remains to be sorted out.
▪ I haven't been an easy man to live with for the past year.
▪ In the past year the first phase of the analysis of bus passenger casualties highlighted in the 1991 Plan has been undertaken.
▪ But the past year waiting for the auction has been very difficult.
▪ But only 11-12 percent had prepared a formal marketing strategy or employed a marketing consultant in the past year.
years
▪ Over past years, locals had experienced increasing crime rates and a growing fear of crime.
▪ Research over the past years has begun to answer lots of questions, but much still remains to be sorted out.
▪ The House has not had a good record in the past years.
▪ I notice that the steepest price rises in past years have been in pubs tied to the national brewers.
▪ In past years events of the meeting have been covered by the media.
▪ Tammuz again considered that some wit in past years had programmed the machine with something other than Aristotelian logic.
▪ The Revenue has also indicated that past years will not be re-examined solely as a result of the decision.
▪ The employers then presented a petition of right seeking repayment of the sums paid in the past years.
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
I wouldn't put it past sb (to do sth)
a blast from the past
▪ The biggest blast from the past was '60s model, Peggy Moffat, whose famous haircut is back in style.
▪ And, a blast from the past.
be a past master (at sth)
▪ Johnny Morris is a past master at both.
▪ That sort of thing wasn't her style at all, but Susan was a past master at it.
be a thing of the past
▪ Life-long employment with a single company is a thing of the past.
▪ Otherwise, Tucsonans should merely leave the bees alone, and the scared news stories will probably be things of the past.
be beyond/past description
be beyond/past retrieval
bludgeon your way through/to/past etc sb/sth
break with tradition/the past
▪ After a point, you break with the past.
▪ Although people complained about the volume, the rhythmic concept represented his biggest break with the past.
▪ Can the break with the past be more vividly described?
▪ However, the changes were not a complete break with the past.
▪ She has broken with the past.
▪ Thinking they were breaking with the past, the early Christians re-enacted it.
▪ Would there be a total break with the past?
▪ Yet the plan represents an important break with the past.
break with tradition/the past
▪ After a point, you break with the past.
▪ Although people complained about the volume, the rhythmic concept represented his biggest break with the past.
▪ Can the break with the past be more vividly described?
▪ However, the changes were not a complete break with the past.
▪ She has broken with the past.
▪ Thinking they were breaking with the past, the early Christians re-enacted it.
▪ Would there be a total break with the past?
▪ Yet the plan represents an important break with the past.
fight your way (through/past etc sb/sth)
▪ After fighting his way through all this, he would have to face an angry and almost certainly stark-naked Quigley.
▪ Bar girls were screaming, and trying to fight their way past us.
▪ Being fit and healthy is especially important if you have to fight your way out of trouble or run for home.
▪ Dana fights his way through the protocol surrounding the medicine chest, has a recipe drawn up, and delivers his balm.
▪ I think also that three other Hearthwares shall come, in case we need to fight our way out of some tight spot.
▪ Meanwhile, the master had sprung from his position backstage and was fighting his way toward me.
▪ We will swim through seas of blood, fight our way through lakes of fire, if we are ordered.
half past one/two/three etc
▪ At half past one the men got up and checked their equipment, gathering several sticks as well.
▪ At half past three he wanted to die, or to kill somebody.
▪ At half past two this morning my wife died.
▪ It was half past three in the morning.
▪ She arrived at the Herald building at half past three, and walked past the uniformed commissionaire to the lift.
▪ The return journey was supposed to start at half past three but there would always be a few people missing.
▪ They'd all been given leaflets about it at half past three.
past/beyond redemption
▪ His lawyer believes Manson is beyond redemption.
▪ Charlotte got back into London rather late that night, and rather tired, but hooked beyond redemption upon Aurae Phiala.
▪ Systems may be evil but people are never beyond redemption.
▪ The Pistols were already banned from most established London venues; punk rock's reputation for violence was now beyond redemption.
▪ The whole business was regrettable but not beyond redemption.
rake over the past/old coals
talk/buy etc your way into/past etc sth/sb
▪ Each receives some kind of government stipend, and Harry talks his way into a computer job while Kate does laundry.
▪ Forbes' rivals have accused him of buying his way into the race.
▪ Now nationalised and backed by government money, the firm may buy its way into video technology and markets.
▪ The adventurers could fight, but it would be safer to try and talk their way past.
▪ The family - without plane tickets and passports - had to talk their way past airport officials on their homeward journey.
▪ They bought their way into the landed aristocracy.
▪ You should be able to buy your way into any Mystery you choose with that.
that's (past/ancient) history
▪ But that's history now the children are back in the classroom.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ For the past two weeks, I've been doing my boss's job while she's away on business.
▪ Groups have put a lot into past projects, and have always seen an excellent result.
▪ He's learned a lot from his past experience.
▪ Judging by her past performance, I'd say Rowena will do very well.
▪ The past few months have been very difficult for Mary.
▪ the past tense
▪ the enormous changes of the past 30 years
▪ The problems we face now are a result of past decisions.
▪ The time is past for us to continue ignoring our differences.
▪ We knew from past experience that the job would take at least two weeks.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Productivity improvements over the past five years, admittedly from a very low base, have been highly impressive.
▪ Trafford education authority has received about £13 million in the past two years to help it reorganise and improve its schools.
II.preposition
PHRASES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
I wouldn't put it past sb (to do sth)
a blast from the past
▪ The biggest blast from the past was '60s model, Peggy Moffat, whose famous haircut is back in style.
▪ And, a blast from the past.
be a past master (at sth)
▪ Johnny Morris is a past master at both.
▪ That sort of thing wasn't her style at all, but Susan was a past master at it.
be a thing of the past
▪ Life-long employment with a single company is a thing of the past.
▪ Otherwise, Tucsonans should merely leave the bees alone, and the scared news stories will probably be things of the past.
be beyond/past description
be beyond/past retrieval
bludgeon your way through/to/past etc sb/sth
break with tradition/the past
▪ After a point, you break with the past.
▪ Although people complained about the volume, the rhythmic concept represented his biggest break with the past.
▪ Can the break with the past be more vividly described?
▪ However, the changes were not a complete break with the past.
▪ She has broken with the past.
▪ Thinking they were breaking with the past, the early Christians re-enacted it.
▪ Would there be a total break with the past?
▪ Yet the plan represents an important break with the past.
break with tradition/the past
▪ After a point, you break with the past.
▪ Although people complained about the volume, the rhythmic concept represented his biggest break with the past.
▪ Can the break with the past be more vividly described?
▪ However, the changes were not a complete break with the past.
▪ She has broken with the past.
▪ Thinking they were breaking with the past, the early Christians re-enacted it.
▪ Would there be a total break with the past?
▪ Yet the plan represents an important break with the past.
fight your way (through/past etc sb/sth)
▪ After fighting his way through all this, he would have to face an angry and almost certainly stark-naked Quigley.
▪ Bar girls were screaming, and trying to fight their way past us.
▪ Being fit and healthy is especially important if you have to fight your way out of trouble or run for home.
▪ Dana fights his way through the protocol surrounding the medicine chest, has a recipe drawn up, and delivers his balm.
▪ I think also that three other Hearthwares shall come, in case we need to fight our way out of some tight spot.
▪ Meanwhile, the master had sprung from his position backstage and was fighting his way toward me.
▪ We will swim through seas of blood, fight our way through lakes of fire, if we are ordered.
half past one/two/three etc
▪ At half past one the men got up and checked their equipment, gathering several sticks as well.
▪ At half past three he wanted to die, or to kill somebody.
▪ At half past two this morning my wife died.
▪ It was half past three in the morning.
▪ She arrived at the Herald building at half past three, and walked past the uniformed commissionaire to the lift.
▪ The return journey was supposed to start at half past three but there would always be a few people missing.
▪ They'd all been given leaflets about it at half past three.
have a checkered history/career/past etc
in the dim and distant past
▪ I am sure in the dim and distant past it had been filched from the wall.
past/beyond redemption
▪ His lawyer believes Manson is beyond redemption.
▪ Charlotte got back into London rather late that night, and rather tired, but hooked beyond redemption upon Aurae Phiala.
▪ Systems may be evil but people are never beyond redemption.
▪ The Pistols were already banned from most established London venues; punk rock's reputation for violence was now beyond redemption.
▪ The whole business was regrettable but not beyond redemption.
rake over the past/old coals
talk/buy etc your way into/past etc sth/sb
▪ Each receives some kind of government stipend, and Harry talks his way into a computer job while Kate does laundry.
▪ Forbes' rivals have accused him of buying his way into the race.
▪ Now nationalised and backed by government money, the firm may buy its way into video technology and markets.
▪ The adventurers could fight, but it would be safer to try and talk their way past.
▪ The family - without plane tickets and passports - had to talk their way past airport officials on their homeward journey.
▪ They bought their way into the landed aristocracy.
▪ You should be able to buy your way into any Mystery you choose with that.
that's (past/ancient) history
▪ But that's history now the children are back in the classroom.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Come on Annie, it's past your bedtime.
▪ It's half past two.
▪ It's quarter past four.
▪ It's ten past nine.
▪ My house is four blocks past the main intersection.
▪ You drive past the stadium on your way to work, don't you?
III.noun
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADJECTIVE
distant
▪ What of that other world, the world of the distant past that now lies beneath our feet?
▪ We move from the distant past, to the past, to the present, to an even earlier past.
▪ Nurses are no longer expected to sublimate their feelings behind starchy officiousness as has been the case in the not so distant past.
▪ How often did El Ninos occur in the distant past?
▪ Time and again a permissive present is contrasted with the not too distant past.
▪ The recent and the more or less distant past thus combine in the amalgam of the present.
▪ When he did speak, it was mostly of the very distant past, remembering his brothers as boys.
▪ Marks and Kersey had had contact in the distant past.
recent
▪ Her normally lucid style had slipped and she had forgotten huge chunks of the recent past.
▪ These remarks, which apply even to the recent past, are worth remembering at the outset.
▪ Much of the interest in the recent past in job enrichment programmes has sprung from this and other work by Herzberg.
▪ That does not mean formal, just not as casual as in the recent past.
▪ They had seen the recent administrative past and it had worked.
▪ Let us begin with a balance-sheet of these opportunities, from both the distant and the more recent past.
▪ Salmonella poisoning has received considerable publicity in the recent past.
▪ Both Dennis and Gustave had at various times in the recent past been passionately enamored with me, or so I suspected.
■ VERB
happen
▪ Erroneous police conclusions are often caused by considerable obstacles to the discovery of what happened in the past.
▪ Whatever happened in the past is the past.
▪ You feel guilty in the here and now about things that happened in the past which you can not correct.
▪ No doubt a Conservative Member will cite the 1930s, just as has happened in the past.
▪ All our interpretations about what happened in the past must ultimately rest upon this evidence surviving from the past.
▪ Before she reached it, she wanted everything that had happened in the past finally to be put behind her.
▪ It is an unstructured corpus of independent observations which rarely go beyond what seems to have happened in the past.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ She'd like to forget her past and start over.
▪ There were certain facts about his past that could hurt his chances of being elected.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ But not if policy makers insist on fighting the battles of the past.
▪ Candidates can not revise their own historic record with the same impunity before a population that has power to retrieve the past.
▪ In the past, women with these symptoms rarely sought treatment, and women with severe cases were hospitalized.
▪ That has always stood me in good stead in the past.
▪ This approach is no more valid today than it has been in the past.
▪ We have encoded and used versions of them from the past we study.
Related phrases:
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Past

Past \Past\, a. [From Pass, v.] Of or pertaining to a former time or state; neither present nor future; gone by; elapsed; ended; spent; as, past troubles; past offences. ``Past ages.''
--Milton.

Past master. See under Master.

Past

Past \Past\, adv. By; beyond; as, he ran past.

The alarum of drums swept past.
--Longfellow.

Past

Past \Past\, prep.

  1. Beyond, in position, or degree; further than; beyond the reach or influence of. ``Who being past feeling.''
    --Eph. iv. 19. ``Galled past endurance.''
    --Macaulay.

    Until we be past thy borders.
    --Num. xxi. 2

  2. Love, when once past government, is consequently past shame.
    --L'Estrange.

    2. Beyond, in time; after; as, past the hour.

    Is it not past two o'clock?
    --Shak.

  3. Above; exceeding; more than. [R.]

    Not past three quarters of a mile.
    --Shak.

    Bows not past three quarters of a yard long.
    --Spenser.

Past

Past \Past\, n. A former time or state; a state of things gone by. ``The past, at least, is secure.''
--D. Webster.

The present is only intelligible in the light of the past, often a very remote past indeed.
--Trench.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
past

c.1300, "done with, over," from past participle of passen "go by" (see pass (v.)). Past participle is recorded from 1798; past tense from 1813.

past

"times gone by," 1580s, from past (adj.).

Wiktionary
past

a. Having already happened; in the past; finished. (from 14th c.) adv. in a direction that passes n. 1 The period of time that has already happened, in contrast to the present and the future. 2 (context grammar English) The past tense. prep. beyond in place, quantity or time

Related phrases:
WordNet
past

  1. adj. earlier than the present time; no longer current; "time past"; "his youth is past"; "this past Thursday"; "the past year" [ant: present(a), future]

  2. of a person who has held and relinquished a position or office; "a retiring member of the board" [syn: past(a), preceding(a), retiring(a)]

  3. a verb tense or other construction referring to events or states that existed at some previous time; "past participle"

past

  1. n. the time that has elapsed; "forget the past" [syn: past times, yesteryear, yore] [ant: future]

  2. a earlier period in someone's life (especially one that they have reason to keep secret); "reporters dug into the candidate's past"

  3. a verb tense that expresses actions or states in the past [syn: past tense]

past

adv. so as to pass a given point; "every hour a train goes past" [syn: by]

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
PAST

PAST or Past may refer to:

  • past, the totality of events which occurred before a given moment in time
  • Past tense
  • PAST (Poland) (Polish: , Polish Telephone Joint-stock Company), a defunct Polish telephone operator
  • PAST Foundation, an American educational foundation
  • PAST storage utility, a distributed storage system
  • Pan African School of Theology (PAST), Nyahururu, Kenya
  • Primeval Structure Telescope (PaST), a Chinese radio telescope
  • Summit Airport (Alaska) (ICAO airport code: PAST)
  • Past a sculpture in Washington, D.C, by Robert Ingersoll Aitken
PAST (Poland)

PAST (short for Polska Akcyjna Spółka Telefoniczna, Polish Telephone Joint-stock Company) was a Polish telephone operator in the period between World War I and World War II. It is notable for its main headquarters in Warsaw, which at the time of its construction was the first and tallest skyscraper in the Russian Empire and the tallest building of Warsaw. The fight for the building during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 also added to the legend of the place.

Past (Aitken)

Past is a 1935 outdoor sculpture by Robert Ingersoll Aitken, located in front of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., in the United States. John Russell Pope served as the sculpture's architect and Edward H. Ratti served as its carver. The sculpture is made of Indiana limestone and measures approximately 20 x 8 x 12 feet, with a base approximately 12 x 12 x 15 feet. Past is a companion piece to Present, also located in front of the National Archives Building.

Related phrases:

Usage examples of "past".

For you, only a few seconds will have gone past, but outside, the rest of the Commonwealth will have had enough time to build new basic cities and towns with a functioning infrastructure to accommodate you.

In a time like ours, when we are primarily concerned with the practical application of scientific discoveries, we are mostly accustomed to regard such flights of thought from a past age as nothing but the unessential accompaniment of youthful, immature science, and to smile at them accordingly as historical curiosities.

She had barely objected when he told her of his new affiliation with the Beller people, and she had said nothing in these past ten days, when the pressure of conflicting cross-currents had kept him bottled up within himself, unloving, cold.

It is a very ancient reproach, suggested by the ignorance or the malice of infidelity, that the Christians allured into their party the most atrocious criminals, who, as soon as they were touched by a sense of remorse, were easily persuaded to wash away, in the water of baptism, the guilt of their past conduct, for which the temples of the gods refused to grant them any expiation.

I had lost the capacity for amazement when I realised that these strange quiverings on the tips of the cervix and even well past it were caused by incredibly long but thin tongues.

Carrying three of the children, Nila the elephant ambled past with her trunk curled around a bundle of hay.

Just as no one believed that anything had gone wrong inside the ambulance for the past two months.

Every day the outcasts were in the streets, women with junk carts, a man dragging a mattress, ordinary drunks slipping in from the dock areas, from construction craters near the Hudson, people without shoes, amputees and freaks, men splitting off from groups sleeping in fish crates under the highway and limping down past the slips and lanes, the helicopter pad, onto Broad Street, living rags.

He prodded the jumble of letters, copied out the text several times on a separate sheet, anagrammatizing the words at different junctions to form new scrambles, buttressing himself from thoughts of the past.

She carried several versions of analysand in working memory, and ran the new programs through the most comprehensive of the group, barely watching the lines of code as they flickered past on the screen.

In times past the Unseelie Attriod was the anathema of the Royal Attriod, of which I am currently a member, as you must be aware.

In Part II we also consider the possible coexistence of primitive hominids and anatomically modern humans not only in the distant past but in the present.

She reddened furiously and rubbed her wound, then glared angrily at the short grinning man who slipped past her, idly flipping a rubber band.

So yes, I annoyed you today and maybe also a bit over the past months by not being here enough.

The legislation not only fills the gaps in our public infrastructure that were defined so clearly in the anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001 but also addresses the areas of food safety and agroterror that have been sorely neglected in the past.