passive voice

Noun

passive voice (usually uncountable, plural passive voices)

1. (usually) The form of a transitive verb in which its subject receives the action.
   • The passive voice is sometimes criticized for de-emphasizing the actor.
   • Many languages, including English, use auxiliary verbs in constructing the passive voice.
2. (proscribed, usually) Any writing which obscures the identity of the perpetrator of an action, regardless of whether the sentence uses the passive form of a verb.
   • Phrases such as officer-involved shooting are often criticized as examples of passive voice.
   • On Saturday, in his first response to Charlottesville, Mr. Trump condemned the violence "on many sides." Then he lapsed into the passive voice, expressing, as he has before, a sense of futility that the divisions between Americans would ever be healed.
     "It's been going on for a long time in our...2017 August 17, Mark Landler, “Where Predecessors Set Moral Standard, Trump Steps Back”, in New York Times