Word.ws English Dictionary

passive aggressive

passive aggressive is the alternative form of passive-aggressive.

Meaning of passive-aggressive

Adjective

passive-aggressive (comparative more passive-aggressive, superlative most passive-aggressive)

  1. Showing passive, sometimes obstructionist resistance to following authoritative instructions in interpersonal or occupational situations.
  2. 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

Forms of passive aggressive

comparativemore passive aggressive
superlativemost passive aggressive

Questions about passive aggressive

What is passive aggressive the alternative form of?
Passive aggressive is the alternative form of passive-aggressive.

Words near passive aggressive in the dictionary

  1. passivation
  2. passivations
  3. passivator
  4. passivators
  5. passive
  6. passive aggressive
  7. passive aggressor
  8. passive aggressors
  9. passive armor
  10. passive armour
  11. passive armours

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: passive aggressive (page history and authors); 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.

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