passive

Pluralpassives

1. 1
   adjective

   Choosing not to act or respond, and letting events take their own course.

   The committee remained passive while the funding problem grew worse.

   Critics accused officials of taking a passive stance toward the flooding.

   Similarinactive, idle, complacent, unresponsive

   Oppositeactive, proactive

2. 2
   adjective

   Acted upon by an outside force or influence while producing no reaction of one's own.

   The material stays passive, deforming under pressure without pushing back.

   A passive sensor merely detects incoming signals rather than emitting any itself.

   Similarinert, unresponsive

   Oppositeactive, reactive

   Note

   Latin passivus, from pati, 'to suffer', meant capable of suffering or feeling: something undergoes an action rather than performing it. Every later sense keeps that idea of being acted upon. A passive material takes the force put on it. A passive sensor takes in a signal and sends nothing back. Grammar, finance, aviation and electronics all build their meanings on this one.

3. 3
   adjective

   Describing a clause or verb construction in which the grammatical subject undergoes the action rather than performing it.

   The editor flagged every passive sentence in the report for revision.

   In a passive construction, the agent is often left out entirely.

   Oppositeactive

   Note

   Grammar took the word with its Latin meaning intact: passivus already meant 'serving to express the suffering of an action'. In English the construction is usually an auxiliary plus a past participle (was flagged, is being built). The one who acts either drops into an optional phrase or vanishes. The adjective qualifies whole stretches of language: a passive sentence, a passive construction, a passive clause.

4. 4
   noun

   The grammatical voice in which the subject is the receiver of the verb's action rather than its performer.

   Scientific papers rely heavily on the passive to sound objective.

   She rewrote the paragraph in the passive to shift focus onto the results.

   Oppositeactive

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A verb form cast in the passive voice, in which the subject denotes the entity undergoing the action.

   The grammar drill required turning ten actives into passives.

   He underlined every passive in his draft and replaced half of them.

   Oppositeactive

   Note

   Here the word counts: one passive, several passives. Each is a single verb form, such as was written or had been sent, whose subject is the logical object of the verb. When an editor circles the passives in a draft, these are what get marked. The voice as a whole is the passive as a system, used with the definite article.

6. 6
   adjective

   Inactive and submissive within a relationship, content to be led rather than to take the initiative, especially in a sexual context.

   Therapists noted that he adopted a passive role with every partner he dated.

   Her passive demeanor in the marriage left all the big choices to her husband.

   Similarsubmissive, docile, compliant, meek

   Oppositedominant, assertive

7. 7
   adjective

   Not taking part in the management or daily running of a business or investment.

   The fund offers passive investors steady returns without any hands-on involvement.

   Her role in the company is entirely passive; she leaves operations to the managing partners.

   Similarhands-off

   Oppositeactive, hands-on

   Note

   Money without management: a passive investor or partner supplies capital and leaves the decisions and the day-to-day running to others. Its natural contrast is the active or managing partner. The word names a role, not a temperament. A passive partner may be forceful in every other respect, so the everyday sense of meekness should not color it here.

8. 8
   adjective

   Lacking any source of motive power of its own; moving only under external or stored forces.

   Engineers tracked the passive probe as it coasted toward the outer planets.

   A passive glider relies entirely on air currents to stay aloft.

   Similarunpowered

   Oppositepowered

   Note

   Aviation's word for flight that no engine is driving. Gliding and soaring are the standard cases of passive flight, and a balloon or an airplane can be called passive when nothing aboard propels it. The craft still moves on air currents, gravity or momentum, so passive here means unpowered, not motionless.

9. 9
   adjective

   Of an electronic component that consumes energy without producing it and cannot amplify a signal.

   Resistors, capacitors, and inductors are the classic passive components of a circuit.

   The filter is entirely passive, drawing no external power to do its work.

   Oppositeactive

   Note

   Electronics sorts its parts by whether they can amplify. Resistors, capacitors and inductors can dissipate or store energy, but none can put out more power than it receives, so all are passive. Transistors, which can provide gain, are the active devices on the other side of the line. A circuit described as passive draws on no external power source to do its work.

10. 10
    nouncountable

    An electronic component that consumes or stores energy without producing it and offers no power gain.

    The technician replaced a faulty passive near the power input.

    Surface-mount passives have shrunk dramatically over the past few decades.

    Note

    Industry shorthand, used mostly in the plural: passives such as capacitors, resistors, crystal oscillators and inductances, set against active devices like logic, memory and processors. Integrated passives, built together into one package, were promoted in The Virginia Engineer (2001) for their reductions in size and weight. The physics is that of the electronics adjective.

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