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Inert   /ɪnˈərt/   Listen
adjective
Inert  adj.  
1.
Destitute of the power of moving itself, or of active resistance to motion; as, matter is inert.
2.
Indisposed to move or act; very slow to act; sluggish; dull; inactive; indolent; lifeless. "The inert and desponding party of the court." "It present becomes extravagant, then imbecile, and at length utterly inert."
3.
Not having or manifesting active properties; not affecting other substances when brought in contact with them; powerless for an expected or desired effect; as, the noble gases are chemically inert.
Synonyms: Inactive; dull; passive; indolent; sluggish; slothful; lazy; lifeless; irresolute; stupid; senseless; insensible. Inert, Inactive, Sluggish. A man may be inactive from mere lack of stimulus to effort; but one who is inert has something in his constitution or his habits which operates like a weight holding him back from exertion. Sluggish is still stronger, implying some defect of temperament which directly impedes action. Inert and inactive are negative, sluggish is positive. "Even the favored isles... Can boast but little virtue; and, inert Through plenty, lose in morals what they gain In manners victims of luxurious ease." "Doomed to lose four months in inactive obscurity." "Sluggish Idleness, the nurse of sin, Upon a slothful ass he chose to ride."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Inert" Quotes from Famous Books



... fill, retreat and return to the charge, he was able to endure being struck at, turn and turn about, by his own party, by the opposition, by the court, by the clergy, because to all such attacks he opposed the inert force of a substance which was equally soft and consistent; thus he reaped the benefits of what was really his misfortune. Harassed by a thousand questions of government, his mind, like that of an old lawyer who has tried every species ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... discoveries of men like Professor Sir J. J. Thomson, Professor Sir Ernest Rutherford, and Professor Frederick Soddy, have shown the very dust to have a complexity and an activity heretofore unimagined. Such phrases as "dead" matter and "inert" matter have ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... magnificence, and that repose which springs from long prosperity, that the new age at last began. Europe was, as it were, a fallow field, beneath which lay buried the civilization of the Old World. Behind stretched the centuries of mediaevalism, intellectually barren and inert. Of the future there were as yet but faint foreshadowings. Meanwhile, the force of the nations who were destined to achieve the coming transformation was unexhausted, their physical and mental faculties were unimpaired. No ages of enervating luxury, of intellectual endeavor, of life ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... had done that which as a junior admiral he did later at Copenhagen, at a moment far more critical to Great Britain. By his own unusual powers of impulse and resolve he had enforced, as far as was possible against the passive, inert lethargy—not to say timidity—of his superior, the course of action which at the moment was essential to the interests of his country. Truly great in his strength to endure, he knew not the perturbations nor the vacillations that fret the temper, and ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... ugliness wherever she finds it. Then there was the satisfaction of being mistress of the poor domain; of planning, governing, deciding; of bringing order out of chaos; of implanting gayety in the place of inert resignation to the inevitable. Another element of comfort was the children's love, for they turned to her as flowers to the sun, drawing confidently on her fund of stories, serene in the conviction that there was no limit to Rebecca's power of make-believe. In this, and in yet ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin


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