- accepting what happens or what people do without trying to change anything or oppose them
- He played a passive role in the relationship.
- a passive observer of events
- She wore a passive expression on her face as if she didn’t care what happened.
Extra Examples- Watching TV is a completely passive activity.
- We are passive recipients of information from the world around us.
Oxford Collocations Dictionaryverbs- be
- seem
- become
- …
- extremely
- fairly
- very
- …
- (grammar) connected with the form of a verb used when the subject is affected by the action of the verb, for example He was bitten by a dog. compare activeTopics Languageb1
Word Originlate Middle English (in sense (2), also in the sense ‘(exposed to) suffering, acted on by an external agency’): from Latin passivus, from pass- ‘suffered’, from the verb pati.
Check pronunciation:
passive