Nearpast

Nearpast is a term used in several disciplines to describe events that occurred in the recent past. It is not a standardized technical term; its exact meaning depends on the context and the time window defined by a given author, system, or field.

In linguistics, near past (or near-past) denotes a tense or aspect marking actions that have happened relatively recently, typically within hours or days of the utterance. The boundary between near past and other past tenses is language-specific and can interact with aspect, evidentiality, or narrative sequencing.

In computing and data analytics, nearpast often refers to a rolling window of recent events used for real-time processing, monitoring, or analytics. Definitions vary, but common implementations use a fixed duration (for example, the last five minutes or the last 1000 events) to drive dashboards, alerts, and anomaly detection.

In journalism and everyday discourse, nearpast is sometimes used informally to indicate information that is newly reported or recently occurred, imbuing the report with immediacy while still distinguishing it from events in the distant past.

Because nearpast is not a formal standard, its interpretation should be clarified within a given text or system by specifying the time window or criteria used to determine what counts as near past.