inactive
/ɪnˈaktɪv
/adjective
1Not engaging in or involving any or much physical activity: an inactive lifestyle...
- In fact, individuals who introduced moderate activity to their formerly inactive lifestyles noticed the most pronounced benefits.
- This may have confined him to a wheelchair for all of his 31 years, but it hasn't restricted him to an inactive lifestyle.
- The Edinburgh teenager is one of a growing number of children whose inactive lifestyles are leading to spinal injuries.
Synonyms
idle, indolent, lazy, lifeless, slothful, lethargic, inert, slow, sluggish, stagnant, dozy, unenergetic, listless, languishing, vegetating, torpid;
immobile
1.1Not working; inoperative: the device remains inactive while the computer is started up...
- Books were sitting on bookshelves along the back wall, opposite them were inactive Apple computers sitting on old school desks.
- The banks believe that accounts should not be treated as dormant until they have been inactive for more than ten years.
- When you turn the computer over to a different user, your session becomes inactive and inaccessible, but your program and files remain open.
Synonyms
inoperative, non-functioning, idle, turned off, dormant;
not working, out of service, unused, out of use, not in use, unoccupied, unemployed, inert, dead
1.2Not engaging in political or other activity: an inactive Russian spy...
- The other two were born from the remains of political formations now inactive but which at one time had parliamentary representation.
- Hadden has little experience of, or respect for, the club game, admitting while Edinburgh coach that he would rather his unused squad players remain inactive at the weekend rather than turn out for their clubs.
- Because I'm a party member (albeit a mostly inactive one), I recently got sent a letter asking me to vote on a short-list of potential candidates.
1.3Having no chemical or biological effect: the inactive X chromosome...
- Gene insertions could also link chemical pathways to previously inactive toxins or transfer allergenic proteins.
- A different mechanism for maintaining and inheriting a pattern of active and inactive genes relies on chemical or structural alterations in the chromosomes.
- As before, treatment of nonirradiated mice with active or inactive T4N5 had no effect on the generation of an immune response.
1.4(Of a disease) not exhibiting symptoms: inactive Crohn’s disease...
- My practice included tuberculous patients and this might have represented inactive disease.
- A score of 150 or less indicates inactive disease, and a score higher than 450 indicates critical illness.
- It is important to have a tuberculin skin test to make sure that you do not have an inactive tuberculosis infection, which could worsen while you are on infliximab therapy.
Derivatives
inactively
/ adverb ...- Now, over 30 years later, some of the people I remember as uneasily inactive (or were they inactively uneasy?) will tell you how they opposed the war.
- I think that it is of paramount importance that at this point I state that at no point did the ALS ever seek, actively, or inactively, the votes or preferences of liberals.
- By testing salmon during winter, when juveniles shelter inactively in streambed refuges, we tested whether individuals associate with or avoid their siblings at a time when the opportunity for kin-directed behaviors is restricted.