What is the passive voice of "A rolling stone gathers no moss"? Some people write it as- ‘No moss is gathered by a rolling stone’. Is that correct? I think the preposition could be on if it is used in a non-idiomatic sense, that is to mean: ‘No moss can grow on a rolling stone."
Of course, it cannot be treated as a proverb here, but just a statement for the purpose of grammatical exercise. Some grammar books in our schools contain such questions without providing the answers, leaving the teachers (of ESL) in a sort of a ‘moral dilemma’ of whether to distort the proverb or not.
Answer
Short answer: the phrase is always active, you shouldn’t change this proverb to a passive form.
However, consider the semantic role played by "A rolling stone". You can consider this to be either the agent, (the thing that does the gathering) or the location (the place where the moss gathers).
If you consider this to be an agent, then the agent in the passive voice is marked by a "by". On the other hand if you consider that "A rolling stone" isn’t the agent by just the location, then "No moss is gathered on a rolling stone." is a valid sentence.
However, if you say "on a rolling stone", then I will ask "Who, or what, would gather the moss?" The passive voice sentence is: "No moss is gathered on a rolling stone (by someone)" So the "on a rolling stone" sentence is literally equivalent to "Someone doesn’t gather any moss on a rolling stone."
All of which is rather silly and not at all idiomatic, because the "rolling stone" is a metaphor it doesn’t mean "a small, spherical piece of rock" it means "a person who doesn’t live in one place for a long time".
So, in short, don’t form the passive voice of this well known proverb.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Manoj Tudu , Answer Author : James K
