Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Renaming the Passive Voice
The blog languagehat is sponsoring a contest to rename the unjustly maligned passive voice. With tongue in cheek I suggest the pathic voice, because Greek παθικός (pathikós) is the equivalent of Latin passivus. English pathic means "passive, suffering" as an adjective and "the passive partner in a homosexual act" as a noun. Another grammatical term with a double meaning is the verb conjugate, meaning not only "to inflect a verb" but also "to have sexual relations."
Newer› ‹Older
