What does "pseudopassive" mean?

A construction where the object of a preposition has been promoted to the role of subject, as in The problem was talked about.

What is a synonym for "pseudopassive"?

Common synonyms include: impersonal passive.

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A construction where the object of a preposition has been promoted to the role of subject, as in The problem was talked about.
"Consider the English pseudo-passive in (4). (4) This bed has not been slept in for many years"
2
A construction that removes the subject from an intransitive verb, as in the Dutch sentence Er wordt gefloten ("[Someone] whistled").
"Consider now the pseudo-passive, Er werd gefloten "There was whistling." Here, just as in the true passive, the morphology asserts high participant not focussed."

Adjective

1
Of or related to the pseudopassive.
"A kind of ‘pseudo-passive’ construction is possible, though, with intransitive verbs having a prepositional phrase complement."
2
Nearly passive; relatively passive.
"The magnitude of the current density within the region is, of course, too high to be regarded as passive in the conventional sense, and we coin the term "pseudopassive" to describe it."
3
Resembling (something) passive.
"Some patients who look passive-aggressive are still pseudopassive-aggressive because though they are difficult, covertly hostile people [...] they are suffering from another emotional disorder."

"Consider the English pseudo-passive in (4). (4) This bed has not been slept in for many years"

From pseudo- + passive.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.