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inert
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
inert
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ NOUN
gas
▪ The inert gas argon is added to help to start the discharge because the vapour pressure of the mercury is very low.
▪ The zinc sulphide is then transferred to a vessel through which passes an inert gas, such as nitrogen or carbon dioxide.
▪ The remaining 11 % of the 45K atoms decay to form the inert gas argon, 40Ar.
▪ If an inert gas is chosen oxides are not produced by burning.
gases
▪ This indicates that the inert gases were acquired by a different means from carbon and nitrogen.
▪ The inert gases are so called because they do not readily form chemical compounds.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ School officials remained inert on the issue of bullying.
▪ She lay there, inert.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
inert

nonmoving \nonmoving\ adj. Not moving. Opposite of moving. [Narrower terms: at rest, inactive, motionless, static, still; becalmed ; {dead(prenominal), stagnant, standing(prenominal), still; frozen(predicate), rooted(predicate), stock-still ; {inert ; {sitting ; {slack ; {stationary ; {immobile, unmoving] Also See: immobile.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
inert

1640s, from French inerte (16c.) or directly from Latin inertem (nominative iners) "unskilled, inactive, helpless, sluggish, worthless," from in- "without" + ars (genitive artis) "skill" (see art (n.)). Originally of matter; specifically of gases from 1885. Of persons or creatures, from 1774.

Wiktionary
inert

a. 1 unable to move or act; inanimate. 2 sluggish or lethargic. 3 In chemistry, not readily reacting with other elements or compounds. 4 Having no therapeutic action. n. (context chemistry English) A substance that does not react chemically.

WordNet
inert
  1. adj. unable to move or resist motion

  2. having only a limited ability to react chemically; not active; "inert matter"; "an indifferent chemical in a reaction" [syn: indifferent, neutral]

  3. slow and apathetic; "she was fat and inert"; "a sluggish worker"; "a mind grown torpid in old age" [syn: sluggish, torpid]

Wikipedia
Inert

In English, to be inert is to be in a state of doing little or nothing.

Usage examples of "inert".

Fifth Level of Complexity as far beyond intelligence as intelligence is from amoebic life, or life from inert matter.

Unlike the Great Temple, which had been given new life as the home of the Jedi praexeum, Atun had been left as it had been found, its mechanisms inert, its passageways dark.

Further, behavioral research efforts by law enforcement agencies is important to their development of additional skill in reading the seemingly inert characteristics of crime scene evidence.

Other workers shoveled the debris left by the process into biofilter bins, where the inert black rock disappeared, to leave only dilithium chips.

The molecule may be enzymatically active in one shape and inert in the other, like a shoehorn that sometimes warps into worthlessness.

Many vegetable extracts are inert, because the plants from which they are produced were not gathered at the proper time.

The old neighborhoods of Shanghai, Feedless or with overhead Feeds kludged in on bamboo stilts, seemed frighteningly inert, like an opium addict squatting in the middle of a frenetic downtown street, blowing a reed of sweet smoke out between his teeth, staring into some ancient dream that all the bustling pedestrians had banished to unfrequented parts of their minds.

When the blast struck the Veil the hyperexcited ions metamorphosed into inert pebbles that dropped to the floor in an impotent clatter.

Bajorans whose names Keogh did not know were now poking at the machine, which lay inert in the soil.

The only way the associated life of such a community can be radically improved is by the leavening of the inert popular mass.

These inconceivably gigantic and mysterious masses had existed in space for an infinitely long time, secretly drawing into their inert ocean everything that came within reach of the inescapable tentacles of their gravity.

Maybe they were too scared that in Methuselah they glimpsed the inert grey hulk of their own futures.

The chambers not only were filled with a completely inert and nonflammable material but were given multiple antiblast, antiradiation, antianything drop shields.

It looks like an inert mineral, but it definitely has an organometallic component.

There are also bracts, consisting of inert, scalelike organisms that fit over the stem and help protect it from physical damage.