Inactivity

noun

noun ·5 syllables ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The quality of being inactive; idleness; passiveness. countable, uncountable

    "Painters depicted Idle Hours (see fig. 99), reverie, solitude, and other themes that reflected Americans' new willingness to eschew productivity, and they sold their canvases to patrons who enjoyed both the inactivities portrayed and seeing themselves portrayed in inactivities."

  2. 2
    being inactive; being less active wordnet
  3. 3
    a disposition to remain inactive or inert wordnet
  4. 4
    the state of being inactive wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
inactioninactivenessa wise passivenesscomfortcontemplationcontemplative life

Example

More examples

"I will probably be the first Polish foreign minister in history to say so, but here it is: I fear German power less than I am beginning to fear German inactivity."

Etymology

From in- + activity.

Related phrases

masterly inactivity

More for "inactivity"

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.