Word.ws English Dictionary

pseudopassive

pseudopassive noun: a construction where the object of a preposition has been promoted to the role of subject, as in The problem was talked about.

Noun

pseudopassive (plural pseudopassives)

  1. A construction where the object of a preposition has been promoted to the role of subject, as in The problem was talked about.
    • Consider the English pseudo-passive in (4). (4) This bed has not been slept in for many years1991, Reineke Bok-Bennema, Case and Agreement in Inuit, Berlin: Foris, →ISBN, page 97
  2. A construction that removes the subject from an intransitive verb, as in the Dutch sentence Er wordt gefloten ("[Someone] whistled").
    • Consider now the pseudo-passive, Er werd gefloten "There was whistling." Here, just as in the true passive, the morphology asserts high participant not focussed.1976, Robert Kirsner, “On the subjectless 'pseudo-passive' in Standard Dutch and the semantics of background agents”, in Charles N. Li, editor, Subject and Topic, New York: Academic Press, →OCLC...

Adjective

pseudopassive

  1. Of or related to the pseudopassive.
    • A kind of ‘pseudo-passive’ construction is possible, though, with intransitive verbs having a prepositional phrase complement.1971, Manindra K. Verma, The Structure of the Noun Phrase in English and Hindi, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, →OCLC, page 157
  2. Nearly passive; relatively passive.
    • The magnitude of the current density within the region is, of course, too high to be regarded as passive in the conventional sense, and we coin the term "pseudopassive" to describe it.1996, G.T. Burstein, V.C. Salter, “The growth of pits during the electrograining of aluminum”, in Madhav Datta, B.R. MacDougall, James Fenton, editors, Proceedings of the Symposium on High Rate Metal...
  3. Resembling (something) passive.
    • Some patients who look passive-aggressive are still pseudopassive-aggressive because though they are difficult, covertly hostile people [...] they are suffering from another emotional disorder.2002, Martin Kantor, Passive-aggression: A Guide for the Therapist, the Patient, and the Victim, Westport, CT: Praeger, →ISBN, page 85

Synonyms of pseudopassive

Forms of pseudopassive

pluralpseudopassives
alternative formpseudo-passive

Origin of pseudopassive

From pseudo- + passive.

Questions about pseudopassive

What does pseudopassive mean?
Pseudopassive means a construction where the object of a preposition has been promoted to the role of subject, as in The problem was talked about.
What part of speech is pseudopassive?
Pseudopassive can be a noun or an adjective.
What is the plural of pseudopassive?
The plural of pseudopassive is pseudopassives.

Words near pseudopassive in the dictionary

  1. pseudoparenchymatous
  2. pseudoparenchyme
  3. pseudoparenchymes
  4. pseudoparticle
  5. pseudoparticles
  6. pseudopassive
  7. pseudopassives
  8. pseudopathological
  9. pseudopathologies
  10. pseudopathology
  11. pseudopatient

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pseudopassive (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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