Passive means accepting what happens without acting. A passive response, remain passive, passive acceptance.
It is usually a criticism when applied to people. In grammar, the passive voice puts the thing acted on first — mistakes were made — and its great use and great abuse is that the actor can be left out entirely. Passive smoking is breathing somebody else's smoke. Passive-aggressive describes hostility expressed by unhelpfulness rather than confrontation. Note passivity, and that passive and patient come from the same Latin verb about suffering.
1adjectivepassiveAccepting what happens without acting.
“Instead of fighting back, he stayed passive and let others decide for him.”
2adjectivegrammaticalOf a grammatical form putting the thing acted on first.
“Mistakes were made is passive and names nobody.”
passive is a quality of not acting.
Latin passivus comes from pati, to suffer or undergo — the same verb as patient and passion. Something passive undergoes rather than acts, which is exactly the grammatical definition.
Proto-Indo-European
*peh₁- — to hurt
Latin
passivus — serving to express the suffering of an action; in late Latin literally capable of suffering or feeling
French
passif
Middle English
passyf
English, today
passive
Built from
From Middle English passyf, passyve, from Middle French -, French passif, from Latin passivus (“serving to express the suffering of an action; in late Latin literally capable of suffering or feeling”), from passus, past participle of patior (“to suffer”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European peh₁- (“to hurt”); compare patient.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA