passive resistance

noun

1. opposition to a government or to specific governmental laws by the use of noncooperation and other nonviolent methods, as economic boycotts and protest marches.

passive resistance

noun

1. resistance to a government, law, etc, made without violence, as by fasting, demonstrating peacefully, or refusing to cooperate

passive resistance

1. A technique of demonstrating opposition to a government's activities simply by not cooperating with them. It is particularly associated with Mahatma Gandhi, who opposed violent revolution in his own country's fight for independence. (Compare civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance.)

Other Word Forms

• passive resister noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of passive resistance¹

First recorded in 1880–85

Example Sentences

Let's hope we see more passive resistance coming from the rest of the federal employees.

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Then he goes into a passive resistance mode.

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She was also reading James Baldwin, listening to the news, and seeing American racial politics shift from civil rights-era passive resistance to a newly assertive Black power.

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The nonviolence of the civil rights movement had nothing to do with “passive resistance.”

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The United States was different, too, deprived of the eloquence and passive resistance against racism that King espoused and burdened with the war in Vietnam for five more years.

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