"Jerry Peters"

An active device uses one signal [current, voltage] to control another.

So a relay is an active device?


** Trying to define a word or term *out of context* is doomed to failure.

A relay is not an *electronics* device - it is an electro mechanical one
that predates "electronics" by about 100 years.

The invention of the vacuum tube triode kicked it off but the word
"electronics" was not applied until the late 1940s - to cover the fields of
radio, radar, computers and TV.

It had a previous life as the name of a branch of physics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics


FYI: if yo want to buy a diode, I suggest you do not waste time looking it
up in an electronics catalogue under the heading of "passive components".


..... Phil