Wiktionary

passive voice

English

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Examples
  • "The ball was kicked by Fred." (as opposed to "Fred kicked the ball.")

Pronunciation

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  • Audio (US):(file)

Noun

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passive voice (usually uncountable, plural passive voices)

  1. (grammar) The form of a transitive verb in which its subject receives the action.
    The passive voice is sometimes criticized for de-emphasizing the actor. ["is ... criticized" is passive.]
    Many languages, including English, use auxiliary verbs in constructing the passive voice.
  2. (proscribed) Any writing which obscures the identity of the perpetrator of an action, regardless of whether the sentence uses the passive form of a verb.
    Phrases such as officer-involved shooting are often criticized as examples of passive voice.
    • 2017 August 17, Mark Landler, “Where Predecessors Set Moral Standard, Trump Steps Back”, in New York Times‎[1]:
      On Saturday, in his first response to Charlottesville, Mr. Trump condemned the violence "on many sides." Then he lapsed into the passive voice, expressing, as he has before, a sense of futility that the divisions between Americans would ever be healed.
      "It's been going on for a long time in our country," he said.
    • 2017 October 19, Lisa Parks, Caren Kaplan, Life in the Age of Drone Warfare, Duke University Press, →ISBN:
      Describing how the assault weapon would operate, Zworykin used the passive voice. Interactions that would have relied on both image and operator were attributed instead to airplane and camera. For example, he explains: "The carrier airplane receives the picture viewed by the torpedo while remaining at an altitude beyond artillery range."
    • 2021 August 9, Mary Harris, “Newsflash: Coronavirus ain't going anywhere”, in Slate‎[2]:
      Ashby: Access to care has always been an issue in certain demographics prior to the pandemic. We talk a lot about disparities, and I actually dislike those terms: disparities and inequality, all that, yada, yada.
      Harris: Is it the passive voice you don't like?

Antonyms

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Coordinate terms

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Translations

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