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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
inactive
adjective
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ Children whose parents are inactive are less likely to be active themselves.
▪ Haley was inactive for Saturday's game because of a knee injury.
▪ She dreads becoming old and inactive.
▪ The fault, which scientists had believed was inactive, caused a 6.5 earthquake.
▪ The virus can be inactive in the body for more than ten years.
▪ Very shy people often become socially inactive.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Fullback Derrick Fenner has spent time on the inactive list.
▪ Men who are currently sexually inactive do not feel masculine during sport.
▪ Moreover by the 1750s the provincial parlements, hitherto relatively inactive, were increasingly following the lead of that of Paris.
▪ Serum was incubated with ID1, which bound active and inactive caeruloplasmin.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Inactive

Inactive \In*ac"tive\, a. [Pref. in- not + active: cf. F. inactif.]

  1. Not active; having no power to move; that does not or can not produce results; inert; as, matter is, of itself, inactive.

  2. Not disposed to action or effort; not diligent or industrious; not busy; idle; as, an inactive officer.

  3. (Chem. & Opt.) Not exhibiting any action or activity on polarized light; optically inactive; optically neutral; -- said of isomeric forms of certain substances, in distinction from other forms which are optically active; as, racemic acid is an inactive tartaric acid.

  4. (Chem. & Biochem.) Lacking biological or biochemical activity; not causing a specific biological or biochemical effect; -- said of substances such as enzymes which have lost their catalytic power, or of small molecules which are tested for some type of biological activity and found to lack that activity; as, after boiling for ten minutes, the enzyme was totally inactive; the methyl analog was inactive as an antibiotic.

    Syn: Inert; dull; sluggish; idle; indolent; slothful; lazy. See Inert.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
inactive

1725, from in- (1) "not, opposite of" + active.

Wiktionary
inactive

a. 1 Not active, temporarily or permanently 2 Not functioning or operating; broken down 3 retired from duty or service 4 (context chemistry English) relatively inert 5 (context physics English) Showing no optical activity in polarized light

WordNet
inactive
  1. adj. not participating in a chemical reaction; "desired amounts of inactive chlorine"

  2. not progressing or increasing; or progressing slowly [ant: active]

  3. not active or exerting influence [ant: active]

  4. of e.g. volcanos; permanently inactive; "an extinct volcano" [syn: extinct] [ant: active, dormant]

  5. of e.g. volcanos; temporarily inactive; "a dormant volcano" [syn: dormant] [ant: extinct, active]

  6. lacking in energy or will; "Much benevolence of the passive order may be traced to a disinclination to inflict pain upon oneself"- George Meredith [syn: passive] [ant: active]

  7. lacking activity; lying idle or unused; "an inactive mine"; "inactive accounts"; "inactive machinery" [ant: active]

  8. not engaged in full-time work; "inactive reserve" ; "an inactive member of the department" [ant: active]

  9. not active physically or mentally; "illness forced him to live an inactive life"; "dreamy and inactive by nature" [ant: active]

  10. not engaged in military action [syn: reserve(a)]

  11. not in physical motion; "the inertia of an object at rest" [syn: motionless, static, still]

  12. temporarily inactive [syn: abeyant, in abeyance(p), suspended]

Wikipedia
Inactive

Inactive is a TRPV channel in invertebrates. Inactive mutant flies show locomotor and hearing deficits.

Usage examples of "inactive".

He called persistently for reinforcements, remaining inactive meanwhile, because he estimated the Confederate army before him at two hundred thousand men, and was unwilling to assail this force, under command of soldiers like Johnston and Lee, until his own force seemed adequate to the undertaking.

The movement of Dulness is necessarily meaningless, and hence her hero is necessarily inactive.

The intensity of the response, however, does not depend on the chemical activity of the substance, for the electromotive variation in the relatively chemically inactive tin is greater than that of zinc.

This quiet, cloistered but not inactive nor unexciting life in these most ancient and fructuous groves of academe is what I want.

But what held Nata transfixed and what so delighted the first officer of the Voyager was that straight ahead were groupings of hundreds of consoles, computers, and, over several hundred yards to the rear, what looked like inactive engines of a sort.

The next neurone in the nerve gets the signal, and is thereafter inactive for a short time.

In many respects life in Bekla during the rains was anything but inactive.

Among three samples of Dyak fruit bats caught at different places and seasons, two included lactating males, lactating females, and pregnant females, but adults of both sexes in the third sample were reproductively inactive.

I often droop over my spiritless, inactive hands, my mind utterly devoid of writeable thoughts, and when I go back to a page I wrote a few days ago, my mind is full of childish terror and rage, it so obviously must be rewritten.

Intense fear causes great drops of perspiration to accumulate on the skin, while the salivary glands remain inactive.

If union with such an Absolute is to be enjoyed, the will must be pulseless, the intellect atrophied, the whole soul inactive: otherwise the introduction of finite thoughts and desires inhibits the divine afflatus!

He steered through the many sharp twists of the ravine, an inactive subduction trench.

The dogs alone remain inactive during this busy scene, being kept harnessed to their burdens until the men have leisure to unstow the sledges, and hang upon the trees every species of provision out of their reach.

Since, in practice, neurons that input into a neuron must have either inhibitory or excitatory connections, each musicality neuron must have a fixed division of its inputs into those expected to be active and those expected to be inactive, and the musicality neuron will only be activated when the actual activity of the neurons that it receives input from takes on this pattern.

In the booty captured in a savage raid, Kane discovers a ring, a bloodstone, which is key to the power that lies buried, inactive but not dea, within the forest.