Mediopassive
adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A mediopassive construction; a phrase that uses the mediopassive voice.
"A systematic study of mediopassive sell in the BNC (Figure 6) confirms that – at least for this verb – the constraint seems to hold: the vast majority of mediopassives with sell contain some kind of modification, namely 92.2%."
- 1 Pertaining to a voice of a transitive verb that is both middle voice and passive voice or reflexive and passive voice. not-comparable
"Whereas the function of the passive voice is to remove the agent from the discussion of a transitive activity, the function of the mediopassive voice is to discuss an event in a way which explicitly denies the involvement of an initiating agent."
Example
More examples"Whereas the function of the passive voice is to remove the agent from the discussion of a transitive activity, the function of the mediopassive voice is to discuss an event in a way which explicitly denies the involvement of an initiating agent."
Etymology
From medio- + passive.
Related phrases
More for "mediopassive"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.