Audio pioneer Ray Dolby passes away

Interesting question.

There may be some nuance I'm not aware of, but to my ears passing away and passing on are largely identical euphemisms for death.

If I really were to stretch I'd say passing on sounds a bit more like something applied to a person who was actively engaged in life, whereas passing away sounds a bit more like what might be said of an elderly person who has already somewhat detached from the world even before death, but that's pretty tenuous.

They mean the same thing, but "passed on" implies a belief in an afterlife.

There is little difference between the two, as it relates to kicking the bucket†. However, using "pass on" may imply passing on to some sort of afterlife, as opposed to simply departing the world.

The phrase "pass on" has more meanings. For instance, you can "pass on" an investment opportunity, meaning to decline to make the investment. Also, you can use it transitively, as in transferring something to somebody.

†http://www.answers.com/topic/kick-the-bucket

The same, except "pass on" can also refer to dessert.

As a native English speaker, they are perfectly synonymous for me.

Americans in general dislike saying people have 'died,' which sounds too final. 'Passed on/away' is a sop to people who believe in the afterlife.

> passed away / passed on ... native English speakers

Native English speaker here. I've told my wife and kids that my obituary is to say simply that I died, not that I passed away, or passed on, or crossed over, or went to meet my Lord and Savior (a common formulation in the South), or anything like that.

(My wife's response: "You won't be here; I'm going to do what I want.")

English is a language where redundancy is an understatement. Speaking as a fairly competent writer, it's effectively my role as a writer to make up yet more ways to say the same thing hoping for a centimeter more of clarity.

As a former newspaper sub editor, I can say there is no difference. Neither should EVER be used. The phrase they are looking for here is "has died". In news reporting it is wrong to beat about the bush, to try to soften the blow or to sugar coat things with meaningless rubbish like "passed away" or "joined the choir invisible". Harrumph.

Who took his stage name from the subject of this thread.

That's a stage name, as you can easily see from his Wikipedia page. Inspired by the equipment he was using.

Only other company I can think of is Bose[1].

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bose_Corporation

DTS comes to mind:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS_(sound_system)

Bose, obviously. But also Mcintosh, Nakamichi, Harman/Kardon, Sennheiser, and Bang Olufsen (Peter Bang was the audiophile in that duo).

But Dolby is different in that he didn't actually make any consumer products. Everything was licensed to studios, OEMSs, theaters, etc. His brand was the Microsoft of the consumer audio world.