Active voice is a grammatical voice common in many of the world's languages. It is the unmarked voice for clauses featuring a transitive verb in nominative–accusative languages, including English and most other Indo-European languages.
Active voice is used in a clause whose subject expresses the agent of the main verb. That is, the subject does the action designated by the verb. A sentence whose agent is marked as grammatical subject is called an active sentence. In contrast, a sentence in which the subject has the role of patient or theme is called a passive sentence, and its verb is expressed in passive voice. Many languages have both an active and a passive voice; this allows for greater flexibility in sentence construction, as either the semantic agent or patient may take the syntactic role of subject.
Read more about Active Voice: Examples
Famous quotes containing the words active and/or voice:
“Why indeed must “God” be a noun? Why not a verb—the most active and dynamic of all.”
—Mary Daly (b. 1928)
“Sing unto the Lordwith the harp, with the harp, and the voice of a
psalm.
With trumpets and sound of cornet make a joyful noise before the Lord,”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalm XCVIII (l. XCVIII, 5–6)