passive

Grammatical voice common in many languages

EntitygrammemeQ1194697

Also known as passive voice · PASS

Instance of: grammeme
Subclass of: voice

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

A passive voice construction is a grammatical voice construction that is found in many 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.

Overview

All data

21 statements · 24% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Opposite of: active
Main Wikidata property: passive voice
Short name: PASS
1
Sources
1.“Dept. of Linguistics | Resources | Glossing Rules”eva.mpg.de/lingua/resources/glossing-rules.phpRetrieved 2023-01-06
View statement on Wikidata ↗
Entry in abbreviations table: tdew used by: MobiTUKI Swahili-English Dictionary

On other databases

14 identifiers linking passive across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

24%

externally sourced

Source last edited October 13, 2026. AIDb refreshes this page daily.

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AIDb. (2026). passive (Q1194697). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/passive-Q1194697