pass down

present singular third person passes down · participle present passing down · participle past passed down · past passed down

1. transitiveTo hand over, pass through or transfer to a lower level, next generation, etc.

   In poor families, solid clothes are passed down from elder children to kid siblings, who must wear them out or if they outgrow them pass them down to still younger relatives.

   1 more example

   "Our language is unwritten and our history and our deeds are passed down from father to son," Wazir Ghulam Mahdi told me.

   1987 October, Galen Rowell, “Baltistan: The 20th Century Comes to Shangri-la”, in National Geographic, volume 172, number 4, page 526

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see pass, down.