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t active, but acted upon; suffering or receiving impressions or influences; as, they were passive spectators, not actors in the scene. The passive air Upbore their nimble tread. Milton. The mind is wholly passive in the reception of all its simple ideas. Locke.

One unprovided with motive power.

Flight, such as gliding and soaring, accomplished without the use of motive power.

In a passive manner; inertly; unresistingly.

The quality or state of being passive; unresisting submission. To be an effect implies passiveness, or the being subject to the power and action of its cause. J. Edwards.

Not susceptible of pain or suffering; apathetic; impassible; unmoved. Impassive as the marble in the quarry. De Quincey. On the impassive ice the lightings play. Pope. -- Im*pas"sive*ly, adv. -- Im*pas"sive*ness, n.

An adjective suffix now usually in a passive sense; able to be; fit to be; expressing capacity or worthiness in a passive sense; as, movable, able to be moved; amendable, able to be amended; blamable, fit to be blamed; salable.

accounts for poverty. To account of, to esteem; to prize; to value. Now used only in the passive. "I account of her beauty." Shak. Newer was preaching more accounted of than in the sixteenth century. Canon Robinson.

A silent or passive assent or submission, or a submission with apparent content; -- distinguished from avowed consent on the one hand, and on the other, from opposition or open discontent; quiet satisfaction.

ity of acting; causing change; communicating action or motion; acting; -- opposed to Ant: passive, that receives; as, certain active principles; the powers of the mind.

ctive manner; nimbly; briskly; energetically; also, by one's own action; voluntarily, not passively.

Actively. [Obs.] "Neither actually . . . nor passively." Fuller.

, to oppress or injure in one's rights; to bear heavily upon; -- now commonly used in the passive TO be aggrieved. Aggrieved by oppression and extortion. Macaulay.

(Psychol.) Not subject to conscious attention; having an indefinite, relatively passive, conscious being; characteristic of the "fringe" or "margin" of consciousness.

The act of hearing or listening; hearing. Audition may be active or passive; hence the difference between listening and simple hearing. Dunglison.

The power of receiving or containing; extent of room or space; passive power; -- used in reference to physical things. Had our great palace the capacity To camp this host, we all would sup together. Shak. The capacity of the exhausted cylinder. Boyle.

See Scion. The cion overruleth the stock; and the stock is but passive, and giveth aliment, but no motion, to the graft. Bacon.

To shut off; to restrain; to limit; to estop; to bar; -- generally in the passive; as, the defendant is concluded by his own plea; a judgment concludes the introduction of further evidence argument. If therefore they will appeal to revelation for their creation they must be concluded by it. Sir M. Hale.…

ntentional failure or forbearance to discover a fault or wrongdoing; voluntary oversight; passive consent or co

Having a passive form with an active meaning, as certain latin and Greek verbs.