active

Active is Latin active, wearing one of the most productive Latin suffixes in English. The root is actus, "a doing," from agere, "to drive, to move," and the ending -ive marks something capable of doing the thing in question. English took the word in the mid-1300s both through Old French actif and directly from Latin activus, which is why the spelling settled on the Latin -ive rather than the French -if.

The oldest English sense is narrower and stranger than the modern one: an active life meant a worldly one, as opposed to a contemplative or monastic life. The sense we now think of first — capable of acting, as opposed to passive — followed in the late 1300s, "energetic, lively" in the 1590s, and "working, in operation" by the 1640s. The grammatical active voice is a later technical borrowing of the same contrast.

active
(adj.)
mid-14c.,
actif
,
active
, "given to worldly activity" (opposed to
contemplative
or
monastic
), from Old French
actif
(12c.) and directly from Latin
activus
, from
actus
"a doing" (from PIE root
*ag-
"to drive, draw out or forth, move").
As "capable of acting" (opposed to
passive
), from late 14c. Meaning "energetic, lively" is from 1590s; that of "working, effective, in operation" (opposed to
inactive
) is from 1640s. The grammatical
active voice
is recorded from 1765; grammatical use of
active
, signifying performance and not endurance of an action, dates from mid-15c. (opposed to
passive
or
reflexive
).
also from mid-14c.

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