pa
ssive
ly
1
without taking action or showing opposition
- She listened passively as the manager criticized her performance.
- He stood passively while others argued over the decision.
- The country cannot afford to remain passively indifferent to rising tensions.
- They watched passively as the opportunity slipped away.
- Don't just accept unfair treatment passively; speak up.
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2
by receiving a signal or energy rather than generating it
- The radar system detects aircraft passively to avoid revealing its position.
- Modern satellites can passively track weather data from space.
- The device passively scans for nearby Bluetooth signals.
- Some surveillance tools gather information passively to remain undetected.
- The phone app works passively in the background to collect movement data.
3
(grammar) in a way that reflects passive grammatical construction, where the subject receives the action
- The sentence was passively written to emphasize the result, not the agent.
- It's better to say "They made a mistake" than to express it passively as "A mistake was made."
- In formal writing, arguments are often framed passively to sound more objective.
- The message is passively delivered to avoid direct blame.
- He revised the text because too many ideas were conveyed passively.