passives
- 1Plural of passive.
Editors frequently flag passives that obscure who performed the action.
She rewrote the report's passives into sharper, active statements.
Note
A regular -s plural that serves the noun's countable senses. In writing advice it means individual passive constructions, the clauses an editor marks for rewriting. Elsewhere it can mean satisfied customers who never spread the word, electronic components that consume energy without producing it or giving power gain, things that lose worth over time, or passive attacks in shortened form. Context almost always settles which is meant.
passives is a form of passive
passive, noun: The grammatical voice in which the subject is the receiver of the verb's action rather than its performer. Full entry
- Forms
- passivepassives plural
- Spelling
- passive → passives: add -s
- Sound
- The ending sounds like /z/.
Use it in a sentence
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