Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In a passive manner; without action; unresistingly.—2.As a passport passive verb; in the passive voice: opposed to actively.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adverb In a passive manner; inertly; unresistingly.
  • adverb As a passive verb; in the passive voice.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adverb In a passive manner; without conscious or self-directed action.
  • adverb In an acquiescent manner; resignedly or submissively.
  • adverb grammar In the passive voice; having a passive construction.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adverb in a passive manner

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From passive +‎ -ly.

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Examples

  • This is excluding the damage tobacco causes to the environment and the unborn babies whose mothers are active smokers or the innocent mothers who inhale the poison passively from the cigarettes smoke exhaled by their husbands, without knowing its ill effects on their baby.

    GYM 2009 | Archive | February 2009

  • On the other hand, the married woman, having once yielded all, tends to remain passively in the man's companionship.

    Married Love: or, Love in Marriage 1918

  • That, however, doesn't mean that attacks on any other group should be accepted passively, which is something that many of us in the U.S. have done way too often and for way too long when it comes to anti-immigrant rhetoric, for example.

    Mariela Dabbah: When Biased Talk Becomes Dangerous Mariela Dabbah 2011

  • "What Heidegger has in mind… is that in our recognition of a house, our synthesis… is effected passively, that is, not through an act of volition."

    Wives and Philosophers Abel, Lionel 1965

  • What Heidegger has in mind, though, is that in our recognition of a house, our synthesis of its various aspects is effected passively, that is, not through an act of volition.

    Wives and Philosophers Abel, Lionel 1965

  • There are some women such as Marie Boyer and Gabrielle Fenayrou, who may be described as passively criminal, chameleon-like, taking colour from their surroundings.

    A Book of Remarkable Criminals 1918

  • The obedience due to that power is by divine command; and subjects are bound, both as men and as Christians, to obey the magistrate actively in all things where their duty to God intercedes not, and however passively, that is, either by leaving their countrey, or if they cannot do that (the magistrate, or the reason of their own occasions hindring them), then by suffering patiently at home, without giving the least publick disturbance.

    Andrew Marvell Birrell, Augustine, 1850-1933 1905

  • Due to this, index funds are known as passively managed funds.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows 2010

  • Due to this, index funds are known as passively managed funds.

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows gorval227 2010

  • BSE etc these funds buy stock in the same ratio they are in the said exchanges. these are therefore also called passively managed funds as there is not much work to do by selecting stocks which should be in or out of the MF.

    Yahoo! Answers: Latest Questions 2009

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