Is “got” passive voice?
"Got" + a past participle is the get-passive: "He got fired," "The window got broken." It is informal but fully passive. "Got" + a noun or adjective is active: "She got a raise," "It got cold."
The get-passive is the conversational cousin of the be-passive. It often implies something happened to someone, sometimes unexpectedly: “She got promoted,” “They got caught in the rain.” In formal writing, prefer “was promoted” or an active sentence. Style checkers that only look for “be” verbs miss get-passives entirely; ours counts them.
Three sentences, checked
Each example below was run through our engine (v1.0.0). Amber marks the passive construction; a dotted underline marks a “be + participle” that is an adjective, not a passive.
Related forms
- Is “was” passive?
- Is “is” passive?
- Is “has been” passive?
- Is “have been” passive?
- Is “had been” passive?
- Is “will be” passive?
- Is “can be” passive?
- Is “could be” passive?
See the full list of passive voice verbs and passive voice in all twelve tenses.
Questions people ask
- Is the get-passive grammatically correct?
- Yes. It is standard English, though informal. Formal and academic writing usually prefer the be-passive or an active sentence.