agentlessadj.
/ˈeɪdʒəntləs/, U.S. /ˈeɪdʒ(ə)ntləs/ 1. Lacking an agent (in various senses); without an agent.
ΚΠ
1831 Poor Man's Guardian 10 Sept. 76/1 Were it known and felt, tyranny would be agentless, and consequently, powerless.
1896 Eau Claire (Wisconsin) Leader 30 May J. A. Smith..will in all probability be made agent of the several companies left 'agentless'.
1988 Spy Dec. 93/2 The actor (particularly the agentless actor-menial) must concoct a memorable way to sell himself to casting directors.
1995 CIO 15 Sept. 16/1 (heading) Agentless travel.
2001 Granta Summer 18 I was agentless, editorless, apparently unpublishable.
2. Grammar. Of a construction: without an expressed agent.Typically designating an English passive verb without a by-phrase.
ΚΠ
1951 J. Gonda Remarks on Sanskrit Passive ii. iv. 49 There are 178 indicatives and about 40 subjunctives. Most of them are..intransitives or eventive, agentless forms.
1968 J. Lyons Introd. Theoret. Linguistics viii. 380 The most typical function of the passive is that it makes possible the construction of ‘agentless’ sentences.
1982 Amer. Speech 57 201 Agentless passives are normally identical in meaning with actives with impersonal they.
2002 C. F. Meyer Eng. Corpus Ling. i. 6 A politician embroiled in a scandal..might choose to utter the agentless passive Mistakes were made rather than I made mistakes or Mistakes were made by me.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, September 2012; most recently modified version published online December 2021).
<
adj.1831