passive voice

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

• noun grammar The form of a transitive verb in which its subject receives the action.
• noun proscribed Any construction that obscures the agent of an action, or the agency of said agent.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

• noun the voice used to indicate that the grammatical subject of the verb is the recipient (not the source) of the action denoted by the verb