Word.ws English Dictionary

impersonal passive

impersonal passive noun: a construction that removes the subject from an intransitive verb, as in the Dutch sentence Er wordt gefloten ("[Someone] whistled"). Also known as pseudopassive.

Noun

impersonal passive (plural impersonal passives)

  1. A construction that removes the subject from an intransitive verb, as in the Dutch sentence Er wordt gefloten ("[Someone] whistled"). Also known as pseudopassive.

Forms of impersonal passive

pluralimpersonal passives

Questions about impersonal passive

What does impersonal passive mean?
Impersonal passive means a construction that removes the subject from an intransitive verb, as in the Dutch sentence Er wordt gefloten ("[Someone] whistled"). Also known as pseudopassive.
What part of speech is impersonal passive?
Impersonal passive is a noun.
What is the plural of impersonal passive?
The plural of impersonal passive is impersonal passives.

Words near impersonal passive in the dictionary

  1. imperseverant
  2. impersistence
  3. impersistent
  4. impersonable
  5. impersonal
  6. impersonal passive
  7. impersonal passives
  8. impersonal subject
  9. impersonal subjects
  10. impersonal verb
  11. impersonal verbs

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: impersonal passive (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “impersonal passive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/impersonal_passive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.