passive-aggressive
passive-aggressive adjective: showing passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to following authoritative instructions in interpersonal or occupational situations.
Adjective
passive-aggressive (comparative more passive-aggressive, superlative most passive-aggressive)
- Showing passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to following authoritative instructions in interpersonal or occupational situations.
- Showing covert hostility, intending to cause annoyance or to humiliate, while maintaining a transparent (to the recipient) veneer of politeness.
- “I Love Lisa” opens with one of my favorite underappreciated running jokes from The Simpsons: the passive-aggressive, quietly contentious relationship of radio jocks Bill and Marty, whose mindless happy talk regularly gives way to charged exchanges that betray the simmering resentment and...2012 August 5, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “I Love Lisa” (season 4, episode 15; originally aired 02/11/1993)”, in AV Club, archived from the original on 29 Mar 2013
- Curt texts, unanswered emails, Facebook statuses declaring “someone” to be an idiot, the notorious subtweet; if you can communicate with it, people can be passive aggressive with it. No doubt there were frosty telegrams in centuries gone by.2015 February 19, Dean Burnett, “OK, don't read this article about passive-aggressive behaviour. Honestly, it's fine”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 20 Oct 2022
passive-aggressive meaning in Indonesian
passive-aggressive in Indonesian
- obstructionism via taking no action
- agesif pasif, judes tersirat
Forms of passive-aggressive
| comparative | more passive-aggressive |
|---|---|
| superlative | most passive-aggressive |
Origin of passive-aggressive
From 1940s, after passive aggression.
Words formed from passive-aggressive
Phrases with passive-aggressive
Words that rhyme with passive-aggressive
- incessive
- progressive
- aggressive
- ingressive
- oppressive
- depressive
- egressive
- essive
- expressive
- impressive
- obsessive
- possessive
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- recessive
- successive
- accessive
- caressive
- concessive
- degressive
- digressive
- double possessive
- pressive
- regressive
- retrogressive
- transgressive
- abessive
- addressive
- adessive
- alloaggressive
- allosuppressive
- antessive
- antidepressive
- antiexpressive
- antioppressive
- antiprogressive
- antirepressive
- anxiodepressive
- atheroprogressive
- atherosuppressive
- autogressive
- autoregressive
- autorepressive
- brogressive
- cardiodepressive
- cardiosuppressive
- compressive
- concrescive
- confessive
- congressive
- corepressive
- crescive
- decompressive
- derepressive
- dispossessive
- effervescive
- excessive
- exessive
- fauxgressive
- fibrosuppressive
- future perfect progressive
- future progressive
Questions about passive-aggressive
- What does passive-aggressive mean?
- Passive-aggressive means showing passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to following authoritative instructions in interpersonal or occupational situations.
- What is passive-aggressive in Indonesian?
- Passive-aggressive in Indonesian is agesif pasif, judes tersirat. See Passive-aggressive meaning in Indonesian.
- What part of speech is passive-aggressive?
- Passive-aggressive is an adjective.
Words near passive-aggressive in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: passive-aggressive (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.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “passive-aggressive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/passive-aggressive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.