PASSIVEVOICE

Passive voice

Passive voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. In a clause with passive voice, the grammatical subject expresses the theme or patient of the main verb – that is, the person or thing that undergoes the action or has its state changed. This contrasts with active voice, in which the subject has the agent role. For example, in the passive sentence "The tree was pulled down", the subject denotes the patient rather than the agent of the action. In contrast, the sentences "Someone pulled down the tree" and "The tree is down" are active sentences.

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passive voice

Noun

  1. The form of a transitive verb in which its subject receives the action.
    The passive voice is sometimes criticized for de-emphasizing the actor.
    Many languages, including English, use auxiliary verbs in constructing the passive voice.
  2. Any construction that obscures the agent of an action, or the agency of said agent.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: passive voice
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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