What is Passive Voice

A voice of a verb indicates whether the action indicated by the verb is performed by the subject or performed on/upon the subject. There are two voices in English; they are the active voice and passive voice. Active voice indicates that the subject itself is performing the action of the verb whereas the passive voice indicates that the action is performed on the subject. In this article, we are going to talk about passive voice in detail.

Passive voice is the opposite of active voice. A sentence is considered to be in passive voice when the action indicated by the verb is performed on the subject. The subject does not perform the action in the passive voice. The person or the thing that is performing the action is indicated at the end of the sentence, and it is introduced with the preposition by. In passive voice, the doer of the action is called agent.

Subject Verb

⇓ ⇓

The cake was eaten by the dog.

In this sentence, the subject (cake) is not doing the verb. In fact, the action (eating) is done to the subject. It is the agent (dog) who performs the action.

Another significant feature of passive voice is that a sentence cannot be turned into passive voice unless it has a direct object. It is this direct object (in active voice) that acts as the subject of the passive voice. For example, let us take an active voice sentence and see how it is turned into the passive voice.

As seen from the above example, the doer of the action becomes the subject in the active voice, while, in the passive voice, the receiver of the action becomes the subject.

This building will be completed by next year.

Examples of Passive Voice

Given below are some examples of passive voice. Observe how the passive verbs (underlined) have been formed.

His father was killed in an accident.

This hotel is designed by the renowned architect, Mathew Simpsons.

The old lady has been murdered.

Everyone was startled by the loud noise.

The building will be completed by 2018.

A tasty dinner is going to be made by my mother.

The road is being cleaned by the laborers.

Cakes are being eaten by him every day.

As observed from the above examples, the verb of passive sentences is a form of be verb combined with a participle.

The table below indicates the formation of active and passive voice forms of the verb eat.

Tense/Aspect	Active	Passive
Simple Present	He eats rice.	Rice is eaten by him.
Present Continuous	He is eating rice.	Rice is being eaten by him.
Present Perfect	He has eaten rice.	Rice has been eaten by him.
Simple Past	He ate rice.	Rice was eaten by him.
Past continuous	He was eating rice.	Rice was being eaten by him.
Past Perfect	He had eaten rice.	Rice had been eaten by him.
Simple Future	He will eat rice.	Rice will be eaten by him.
Future Perfect	He will have eaten rice.	Rice will have been eaten by him.