The Cyrenaics employed two different types of locution to designate pathē. I shall call these types verbal and adverbial.

The verbal expressions consist of present-tense passive verbs. We find them in the testimonies in the first and third persons, singular and plural, and in the infinitive. Colotes attempts to ridicule the Cyrenaics by attributing to them the claim that ‘they are themselves being walled (toichousthai) and horsed (hippousthai) and manned (anthrōpousthai)’ (1120d [T1]); Plutarch denounces Colotes for intentional inaccuracy, and reports what he claims to be the true letter of the doctrine: ‘they say, we are being sweetened (glykainesthai) and bittered (pikrainesthai) and chilled (psychesthai) and warmed (thermainesthai) and illuminated (phōtizesthai) and darkened (skotizesthai)’ (1120e [T1]); the anonymous Theaetetus commentator attests the locution ‘I am being burnt’ (kaiomai: 65.33 [T3]), and Sextus mentions the expressions ‘we are being whitened (leukainometha) and sweetened (glykazometha)’ (M v11.191. [T6b]), ‘he is being reddened’ (erythrainetai: 192), ‘they are being yellowed (ōchrainontai) or reddened (erythrainontai) or doubled (dyazontai)’ (193), and ‘being whitened’ (leukainesthai: 197).

The adverbial formulas are constituted by a present-tense passive verb and an adverb. According to Sextus' testimony in T6b, the Cyrenaics maintained that ‘it is probable that one is disposed whitely (leukantikōs diatethēnai) even by what is not white’ (Sextus, M v11.192 [T6b]). They also assumed that ‘the person who suffers from vertigo or jaundice is moved yellowly’ (ōchrantikōs kineitai: ibid.).