förfluten

Förfluten is a Swedish adjective meaning past or bygone. It describes things that have passed or are no longer present, most commonly time periods, events, or states.

In usage, förfluten is common in historical or literary contexts. It frequently occurs in phrases such as förfluten tid, meaning the past time, and den förflutna tiden, meaning the bygone era. It can modify nouns both attributively, as in en förfluten era, and predicatively, as in tiden var förfluten. The term is more typical of formal or literary register than everyday speech.

Origin and form: the word is built from the prefix för-, meaning before or previously, combined with a form related to a past participle used to indicate completion. The exact historical development traces back to Old Swedish. In modern Swedish, the inflected forms include förfluten in the indefinite singular, förflutna in the definite plural or attributive plural, and den förflutna tiden in definite phrases.

See also: related concepts include förgången, meaning past or bygone, and äldre, meaning older or former. In Swedish writing, förfluten often conveys a sense of distance, memory, or historical perspective, and it appears in historical narrative, literature, and philosophical discussions of time.