“Eso es historia /

Ya lo pasado, pasado

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• Meaning

Things that belong to the past cannot possibly be changed. We can think about them, learn from them, reflect about them, but never change them.

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• Origin

The idea behind this expression is simple. When water flows, as in a river,  it cannot go back just by a mere wish. We use this expression to refer to thing that have an irreversible outcome. Even so, we can use the third conditional to think about them, and to learn a moral from them, but we cannot go back to the past and change the situation. A similar expression to this one is, “water under the bridge.”

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• Example

Mom: Ok, hun. You are a teenager, you are single, you don´t have a fiancé and wow, we know you are pregnant. What are we going to do?

Girl: Oh, mom! I wish I could go back in time and refused to have gone to that lousy party.

Mom: Bla, bla, bla… That is water over the dam. Set your feet on the ground.  What are we going to do?

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