How to Use passive in a Sentence

passive

adjective
Definition of passivenext
Synonyms for passivenext
  • In “He was hit by the ball,” “hit” is a passive verb.
  • Life is too short for any of us, and all of us, to be passive.
    — Cate Rubenstein, Rolling Stone, 11 Jan. 2023
  • There didn’t seem to be a passive listener in the house.
    — Joshua Barone, New York Times, 10 Oct. 2022
  • The Rangers finished up the first half a little too passive at the plate.
    — Evan Grant, Dallas News, 12 July 2021
  • There are a bunch of passive funds whose expenses run the gamut.
    — Bailey McCann, WSJ, 5 Nov. 2022
  • The long-term plan is to maintain the park as a passive space for the neighborhood.
    — Mike Jones, Arkansas Online, 17 Dec. 2022
  • The look she was told to go after was a kind of passive placidity.
    — Kathleen Hou, The Cut, 25 June 2018
  • Roberts argued that Black’s role in the siege was passive.
    — Carol Robinson | Crobinson@al.com, al, 21 Jan. 2021
  • Folks in the area don't have a choice in being passive about it, either.
    — Southern Living, 29 Mar. 2018
  • Nope, a passive speaker is just a box with a speaker cone or two.
    — Parker Hall, Wired, 15 Oct. 2020
  • Rae convinced him that this was an easy way to earn passive income.
    — Jason Parham, WIRED, 13 Sep. 2023
  • Going along for the ride is less than a surefire way to live up to the passive side of one's nature.
    — Larry Griffin, Car and Driver, 21 Feb. 2023
  • This is not a time for ownership to be cheap, or the front office to be passive.
    — Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY, 29 July 2019
  • These funds tend to have a higher expense ratio than the large passive funds.
    — Bailey McCann, WSJ, 8 Jan. 2022
  • Being passive at the most senior level is not going to get the job done.
    — Chauncey Alcorn Cnn Business, CNN, 9 Sep. 2020
  • About one quarter of the available shares were owned by passive investors.
    — Andrew Stuttaford, National Review, 12 Feb. 2021
  • This weekend would see active usage of the space, and the next two weeks would be more passive.
    — Dallas News, 8 Oct. 2022
  • So far, no passive-aggressive knocks from the other side of the wall.
    — Hannah Herrera Greenspan, chicagotribune.com, 5 Aug. 2020
  • Last year's version used passive cooling, while the new one has a fan.
    — Scharon Harding, Ars Technica, 15 Dec. 2022
  • The park will be a passive site that will include perhaps a bench and sign, but no lighting.
    — cleveland, 22 Oct. 2019
  • For the most part, there’s a very passive approach to incidents.
    — Melissa Sanchez, ProPublica, 12 Oct. 2022
  • Adults should not be passive, hoping that the problem will take care of itself.
    — Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic, 26 Aug. 2021
  • Neither looked passive on offense as starters, which was a good sign.
    — Jason Jones, sacbee, 23 Dec. 2017
  • But in the last few decades, glia have shed their identity as passive servants.
    — Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta Magazine, 21 Nov. 2023
  • But in the past few decades, glia have shed their identity as passive servants.
    — Yasemin Saplakoglu, WIRED, 14 Jan. 2024
  • There were a lot of rather sweet, very good, but slightly passive players.
    — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 17 Dec. 2021
  • Index providers build the gauges that passive funds track and active managers use as a yardstick.
    — The Economist, 24 Oct. 2020
  • Again, love is rendered as some passive act that enables abuse.
    — Candice Benbow, Essence.com, 15 Jan. 2018
  • This means a blend of active and passive movement, both indoors and outdoors.
    — Steven MacAri, Harper's BAZAAR, 4 Jan. 2018
  • When does a job or side hustle turn into passive income?
    — cleveland, 20 Feb. 2022

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'passive.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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