How to Use passive in a Sentence

passive

adjective

• In “He was hit by the ball,” “hit” is a passive verb.
• This is not passive screen time.
  — Gerald Bradshaw, Chicago Tribune, 13 Mar. 2026
• But chill does not mean passive.
  — Lien De Pau, Forbes.com, 30 Jan. 2026
• Life is too short for any of us, and all of us, to be passive.
  — Cate Rubenstein, Rolling Stone, 11 Jan. 2023
• Their play was too passive back in the autumn.
  — Matt Woosnam, New York Times, 11 Mar. 2026
• Index providers and the passive funds that track them.
  — Shivaram Rajgopal, Forbes.com, 1 June 2026
• The egg was thought to be passive while the sperm was active.
  — Sara Giordano, The Conversation, 4 Sep. 2025
• That is not passive scrolling; that is intent.
  — Rhea Karo, Forbes.com, 15 May 2026
• Hope, in this framing, is not passive.
  — Jasmine Browley, Forbes.com, 1 June 2026
• Still, all those devices are passive.
  — IEEE Spectrum, 18 Feb. 2026
• Not every woman is meant to sit back and be passive.
  — Bethy Squires, Vulture, 6 May 2026
• Nope, a passive speaker is just a box with a speaker cone or two.
  — Parker Hall, Wired, 15 Oct. 2020
• Rae convinced him that this was an easy way to earn passive income.
  — Jason Parham, WIRED, 13 Sep. 2023
• There are a bunch of passive funds whose expenses run the gamut.
  — Bailey McCann, WSJ, 5 Nov. 2022
• Even passive suits add mass that the user must carry.
  — Srishti Gupta, Interesting Engineering, 24 Mar. 2026
• Fear of death is passive; hatred of death is active.
  — Adrienne Lafrance, The Atlantic, 28 June 2026
• Putin looks passive, even absent.
  — Joshua Yaffa, New Yorker, 8 May 2026
• Again, love is rendered as some passive act that enables abuse.
  — Candice Benbow, Essence.com, 15 Jan. 2018
• Neither looked passive on offense as starters, which was a good sign.
  — Jason Jones, sacbee, 23 Dec. 2017
• Folks in the area don't have a choice in being passive about it, either.
  — Southern Living, 29 Mar. 2018
• Last year's version used passive cooling, while the new one has a fan.
  — Scharon Harding, Ars Technica, 15 Dec. 2022
• My students are not passive about much of anything.
  — Ryan Gable, Chicago Tribune, 21 Jan. 2026
• But Colin doesn’t stay passive for long.
  — Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire, 1 Oct. 2025
• There were a lot of rather sweet, very good, but slightly passive players.
  — Maureen Lee Lenker, EW.com, 17 Dec. 2021
• The look she was told to go after was a kind of passive placidity.
  — Kathleen Hou, The Cut, 25 June 2018
• This is known as passive solar heating.
  — Ashlyn Needham, Southern Living, 30 Aug. 2025
• This passive income can add up to a few thousand dollars a year.
  — Kathy Barnes, Better Homes & Gardens, 4 Apr. 2026
• For Jim Stavis, hope is not abstract or passive.
  — Daniel Fusch, USA Today, 22 Apr. 2026
• The lesson from this side hustle is that e-commerce is not passive.
  — Alejandra Rojas, Forbes.com, 20 May 2026
• This is not a time for ownership to be cheap, or the front office to be passive.
  — Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY, 29 July 2019