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passive English

Meaning passive meaning

What does passive mean?
Definitions in simple English

passive

If someone is passive, they do not normally respond or take action. Watching TV is a much more passive activity than reading. After his injury, he was forced to play a more passive role on the team. A passive clause has the natural object as its subject. While "she hit me" is an active clause, "I was hit (by her)" is passive.

passive

lacking in energy or will Much benevolence of the passive order may be traced to a disinclination to inflict pain upon oneself — George Meredith peacefully resistant in response to injustice passive resistance expressing that the subject of the sentence is the patient of the action denoted by the verb academics seem to favor passive sentences (= passive voice) 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 'The ball was thrown by the boy' uses the passive voice 'The ball was thrown' is an abbreviated passive

Synonyms passive synonyms

What other words have the same or similar meaning as passive?

Examples passive examples

How do I use passive in a sentence?

Simple sentences

Tom, you're a man; passive resistance is not an option for you when someone you really love has been taken away like that.
How can you be so passive? Why don't you retaliate?
Mary is passive-aggressive.
Tom is passive-aggressive.
He has a passive character.
I'm using the passive voice because I don't want to take responsibility for my actions.

Movie subtitles

You, Esmeralda, have sympathy, and yet you're willing to remain passive and let the inevitable happen.
Passive resistance?
Well, because they're kind of passive to begin with.
People are passive.
Adopt a passive attitude, the situation is complex and uncertain.
She only had short affairs, for she was mean and passive.
To remain passive is in itself a course of action.
To get 1 5 minutes of activity outside the spacecraft to eyeball the engine, you have to trade off three or four hours of passive breathing.
I lay there passive.
She's so passive.
They're being far too passive, and selfish!
I was passive, incapable of talking to those guys.
And the worst depravation is passive consent.
Catatonia, dementia praecox, passive schizoid paranoia.
Unfortunately, Klara has been very passive since the Diphtheria episode.
Passive resistance means strict observance of law and order, mind you.
Derail a train and go on a passive resistance spree!
To turn passive resistance into bloody revolution.
Passive resistance, so-called, is notoriously difficult to deal with.
Father shouted that the unions should stop being so quiet and passive.
MAKES THE SUBJECT PASSIVE, OBEDIENT TO MY WILL.
How can she, with her passive virtues and shyness, help an ambitious husband to climb the slippery steps of the new society?
Adopt a passive attitude. The situation is complex and uncertain.
No, Lenny, I just believe in passive resistance.
Well, is this the voice of passive resistance speaking?
That is, whether his emotions are hostile or passive.
You know, that's the trouble with passive men.
That is what I call, the passive state.
By being passive, we encourage evil.
My only fault is to have been too passive up until now.
I think only birds look well stuffed because. Well, because they're kind of passive to begin with.
A typical passive indolence of indolent people.
You're too passive, you're imagining Stalingrad everywhere.
I lay there passive. - And then?
Something has happened in the last few months that has made us transition from a passive to an active phase.
The attitude that it requires as its principle. is this passive acceptance. that it has in fact already obtained. in its manner of appearing without reply, in its monopoly over appearance.
Passive resistance means nothing to him.
What, are you suggesting passive resistance?

News and current affairs

Yet throughout all this, the Federal Reserve remained passive.
With its passing, people became passive once more.
Such an ambiguous declaration can be interpreted either as active support for the Russian police or as passive collaboration.
By taking an essentially passive position, this approach might merely prolong the Age of Terrorism needlessly.
It will pay still more if policymakers remain passive about China's destructive currency policy.
Insisting that self-determination was the only way ahead, he called on the army to reject even passive association with the insurrection and instructed it to re-establish public order.
Suddenly the popular wisdom that Egyptians are passive and afraid to act did not seem to be holding up.
Europe cannot once again remain passive in the face of an issue that is of such crucial importance for the international order, especially one that is in its own neighborhood.
Nor have they been completely passive.
As a result, the two sides have become stuck in a passive-aggressive standoff that has made serious negotiation impossible.
In short, the ECB bond-buying program has transformed the ECB from a passive observer of the euro crisis, paralyzed by the outdated legalistic constraints of the Maastricht Treaty, into a proper lender of last resort.
The constant reduction of the prerequisites for making sense of culture may confirm the view that consumers of mass culture are passive.
So the good news that nobody has to be afraid of Germany is accompanied by bad news: Unintentionally, the colossus is exerting a kind of passive hegemony; his lethargy is slowing down Europe's dynamism.
Both reforms are incomplete and may not be sufficient to jump-start the economy and mobilize a singularly passive civil society.
New reactors being built today incorporate significantly enhanced safety features, both active and passive, compared to the Fukushima generation of reactors.
Oil revenues enable them to bribe the population to remain politically passive, while discouraging the creation of the kind of free-market system that breeds democracy.
Indeed, the war against the arts and humanities in the US coincided with the emergence of an increasingly ignorant and passive population and a government that serves at the pleasure of corporate interests.
They become actors rather than passive recipients of aid, and aid is more effective as a result.
European leaders cannot remain passive in the face of the dangerous populist tsunami now crossing the continent, and they know it.
Even when times were better, Merkel's passive political style allowed vacuums to form, which were filled by other political forces within her party.
For more than two decades, shareholders in all the developed countries, unorganized and passive from 1945 until 1975-1980, have recast themselves in the form of pension funds, investment funds, and hedge funds.

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