passivenessn.

1648 Rebellion Strip't & Whipt 56 Why will you by your too too passivenesse be continuers of your owne Miseries?

1678 R. Barclay Apol. True Christian Divinity v. §17. 149 In him that is saved, the working is of the Grace and not of the Man; and it's a Passiveness, rather than an Act.

1710 G. Berkeley Treat. Princ. Human Knowl. §25 The very being of an idea implies passiveness and inertness in it.

1754 J. Edwards Careful Enq. Freedom of Will iv. ii. 203 Action, when set properly in Opposition to Passion, or Passiveness, is..a meer Relation.

1798 W. Wordsworth Expost. & Reply in W. Wordsworth & S. T. Coleridge Lyrical Ballads 184 I deem that there are powers, Which of themselves our minds impress, That we can feed this mind of ours, In a wise passiveness.

1832 H. Martineau Ireland v. 78 Dora's passiveness arose from a sense of the uselessness of opposition.

1845 J. Stoddart Gram. in Encycl. Metrop. (1847) I. 41/1 It signifies activity with actives, and passiveness with passives..but indeed it always savours, in some degree, of passiveness.

1875 Jrnl. Amer. Geogr. Soc. 7 149 The influence of a tropical environment is still more clearly visible in that passiveness..which distinguishes the religious systems of the Brahmins and Buddhists alike from any other that the world has seen.

1917 E. Wharton Summer xvii. 268 A feeling of complete passiveness had once more come over her.

1970 Current Anthropol. 11 443/2 Christianity stresses humility rather than pride, passiveness rather than aggression.

2003 Mideast Mirror (Nexis) 14 Jan. (Arab/Islamic World section) Arab nations are suffering from what we can call a state of severe stagnancy and passiveness.