How to Use passive in a Sentence
passive
adjective-
Life is too short for any of us, and all of us, to be passive.
—Cate Rubenstein, Rolling Stone, 11 Jan. 2023
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The Rangers finished up the first half a little too passive at the plate.
—Evan Grant, Dallas News, 12 July 2021
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There didn’t seem to be a passive listener in the house.
—Joshua Barone, New York Times, 10 Oct. 2022
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Roberts argued that Black’s role in the siege was passive.
—Carol Robinson | Crobinson@al.com, al, 21 Jan. 2021
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The long-term plan is to maintain the park as a passive space for the neighborhood.
—Mike Jones, Arkansas Online, 17 Dec. 2022
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Folks in the area don't have a choice in being passive about it, either.
—Southern Living, 29 Mar. 2018
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There are a bunch of passive funds whose expenses run the gamut.
—Bailey McCann, WSJ, 5 Nov. 2022
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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
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So far, no passive-aggressive knocks from the other side of the wall.
—Hannah Herrera Greenspan, chicagotribune.com, 5 Aug. 2020
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The look she was told to go after was a kind of passive placidity.
—Kathleen Hou, The Cut, 25 June 2018
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Last year's version used passive cooling, while the new one has a fan.
—Scharon Harding, Ars Technica, 15 Dec. 2022
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This is not a time for ownership to be cheap, or the front office to be passive.
—Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY, 29 July 2019
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DJ Humphries got a deal, but the pass protection was passive, at best.
—Greg Moore, The Arizona Republic, 12 Sep. 2022
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Nope, a passive speaker is just a box with a speaker cone or two.
—Parker Hall, Wired, 15 Oct. 2020
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This weekend would see active usage of the space, and the next two weeks would be more passive.
—Dallas News, 8 Oct. 2022
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For the most part, there’s a very passive approach to incidents.
—Melissa Sanchez, ProPublica, 12 Oct. 2022
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The park will be a passive site that will include perhaps a bench and sign, but no lighting.
—cleveland, 22 Oct. 2019
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There were a lot of rather sweet, very good, but slightly passive players.
—Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 17 Dec. 2021
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These funds tend to have a higher expense ratio than the large passive funds.
—Bailey McCann, WSJ, 8 Jan. 2022
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Rae convinced him that this was an easy way to earn passive income.
—Jason Parham, WIRED, 13 Sep. 2023
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Being passive at the most senior level is not going to get the job done.
—Chauncey Alcorn Cnn Business, CNN, 9 Sep. 2020
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These self-guide weapons use active and passive sonar to strike targets more than 5 miles away.
—Alex Hollings, Popular Mechanics, 5 Apr. 2023
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About one quarter of the available shares were owned by passive investors.
—Andrew Stuttaford, National Review, 12 Feb. 2021
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Adults should not be passive, hoping that the problem will take care of itself.
—Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic, 26 Aug. 2021
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That’s an oddly passive way to say her son killed the bad guy — one that feels all too familiar.
—Leah Marilla Thomas, refinery29.com, 10 May 2021
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But in the last few decades, glia have shed their identity as passive servants.
—Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta Magazine, 21 Nov. 2023
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But in the past few decades, glia have shed their identity as passive servants.
—Yasemin Saplakoglu, WIRED, 14 Jan. 2024
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Neither looked passive on offense as starters, which was a good sign.
—Jason Jones, sacbee, 23 Dec. 2017
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Close drapes, shades and blinds during the day to keep passive solar energy from heating up your home.
—Joseph Hernandez, Kansas City Star, 1 Apr. 2024
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In the zodiac, signs are split into two categories: active (Fire and Air) and passive (Water and Earth).
—Skyler Caruso, Peoplemag, 3 Apr. 2024
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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