4 ms·
You're trying to show how the active and passive sense of verbs contrast, but your examples are inconsistent. Let's keep A and B fixed. "A eats B" -> "B is eat
by intortus 12y ago
You're trying to show how the active and passive sense of verbs contrast, but your examples are inconsistent. Let's keep A and B fixed.
"A eats B" -> "B is eaten by A". Makes total sense!
"A comprises B" -> "B is comprised by A". This makes sense too!
However, no one uses "comprised of" this way. The overwhelmingly common usage is "A is comprised of B", when what is really meant is "A comprises B". In other words, people rarely use the active form of "to comprise", and when they use the passive form they usually invert its meaning.
Arguably that's just how language works, and of course I can carry a conversation with someone who speaks this way without skipping a beat. But the written compendium of all the world's knowledge should aspire to slightly higher formality.
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