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Passive   /pˈæsɪv/   Listen
Passive

adjective
1.
Lacking in energy or will.  Synonym: inactive.
2.
Peacefully resistant in response to injustice.  Synonym: peaceful.
3.
Expressing that the subject of the sentence is the patient of the action denoted by the verb.
noun
1.
The voice used to indicate that the grammatical subject of the verb is the recipient (not the source) of the action denoted by the verb.  Synonym: passive voice.  "'The ball was thrown' is an abbreviated passive"



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"Passive" Quotes from Famous Books



... for she had felt the tingling of a new strange force in Brandon's touch. A man, not a worm, but a real man, with all the irresistible infinite attractions that a man may have for a woman—the subtle drawing of the lodestone for the passive iron—had come into her life. Doubly sweet it was to her intense, young virgin soul, in that it first revealed the dawning of that two-edged bliss which makes a heaven or a hell of earth—of earth, which owes its very existence ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major

... usurped prerogatives of the King for the money of the people. This is the agent by which modern nations will recover their rights. I sincerely wish that, in this country, they may be contented with a peaceable and passive opposition. At this moment we are not sure of this; though as yet it is difficult to say what form the opposition will take. It is a comfortable circumstance, that their neighboring enemy is under the administration of a minister ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... the nobler activities—the mental and spiritual forces—through the minds and works of men. I would find such attrition more helpful than this phase of creation which thou callest 'nature,' whose unfolding is more passive, depending on its ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... take them away and dispose of them at his pleasure. How was it possible that Jehoiada should waive his divine right and suffer such a sacrilegious invasion of sacred privileges? how was it possible that he should be blamed for his (at first) passive resistance of the illegal invasion; how was it possible at all that the priest in his own proper department should be called to account by the king? Chronicles knows better than that. The wicked Athaliah had wasted and plundered the temple; Joash determined to restore it, and for this ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen

... of all other people—expressed in a collective and belligerent way. It is not, as said before, that all men at the South are of this filibustering cast; but the bold, enterprising, and leading class of the population are so, and the remainder are passive in their hands. Virtually and practically, therefore, the South are a nation of people having far more relationship in thought and purpose with the old Romans during the period of the republic and the empire, or with the more modern Goths and Vandals and Huns, than ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various


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