A lack of initiative

Usage examples of passivity.

This inherent passivity had much to do with the fact, thought Marianne, that the door to the muniments room was not repaired for days although its need for repair had been plaintively stated half a dozen times.

ICHIGO and the Chinese military passivity in the face of it raised the fear that the Japanese army in China might root itself into the mainland and continue to fight even after defeat of the home islands, prolonging the war perhaps for years before it could be conquered.

Covertly, Myshkin is a cultural sponge whose capacity for absorbing pain and evil sacralizes passivity.

Stung a bit still at being bumped by Bellerophon, I protested that direct passivity was not my style.

After she had brooded on the news, it brought a rather sharp discussion, during which he perceived to the full the fundamental opposition between her active temperament and his wife's passivity.

His mother had worn him out, the passivity of his father had depressed him, he feared they hadn't costed the breads right for tomorrow's demonstration.

But I was a European, and I had not lived long enough in the country to acquire the absolute passivity of the Native, as some Europeans will do, who live for many decennaries in Africa.

Or if she chose to match his passivity with her own, and let him linger becalmed until he perished on deck, and was withered by the sun, then that lay in her power too, and he wouldn't lift a hand to contradict her will.

They'd been sufficiently liquored up and each had been given a codeine tablet for passivity.

Perhaps Jaric's passivity was feigned, a ruse intended to throw the Sathid off guard while he marshalled resources for his final step into mastery.

You can no longer pretend passivity- and you need not pretend ignorance.

Leaving men free to think, to act, to produce, to attempt the untried and the new, its principles operate in a way that rewards effort and achievement, and penalizes passivity.

As superintendent of police in occupied Philadelphia, Galloway became impatient with Howes languor and passivity and undertook himself to organize an intelligence network, a civilian commissary, a new sanitation department and involved himself in such civil functions as the issuance of tavern licenses, curfew regulations, and poor relief.

And now Lysander was sprawled on the same low sofa, huddled in Ferdie's long, dark blue overcoat, re-adjusting his long legs, yet as seductive in his drooping passivity as Narcissus or Balder the Beautiful.

All that was necessary was to create a tipping point, a point at which the arrogance and hatred could be brought to overwhelm passivity and caution, and then the heretics would become an army.