INACTION

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does inaction mean? 

• INACTION (noun)
  The noun INACTION has 1 sense:

1. the state of being inactive

  Familiarity information: INACTION used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• INACTION (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

The state of being inactive

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

inaction; inactiveness; inactivity

Hypernyms ("inaction" is a kind of...):

state (the way something is with respect to its main attributes)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "inaction"):

abeyance; suspension (temporary cessation or suspension)

anergy (inactivity and lack of energy)

arrest; check; halt; hitch; stay; stop; stoppage (the state of inactivity following an interruption)

calcification (an inflexible and unchanging state)

deep freeze (temporary inactivity or suspension)

desuetude (a state of inactivity or disuse)

dormancy; quiescence; quiescency (a state of quiet (but possibly temporary) inaction)

extinction (no longer active; extinguished)

holding pattern (a state of inaction with no progress and no change)

rest (a state of inaction)

doldrums; stagnancy; stagnation (a state of inactivity (in business or art etc))

stagnancy; stagnation (inactivity of liquids; being stagnant; standing still; without current or circulation)

stasis (inactivity resulting from a static balance between opposing forces)

Antonym:

action (the state of being active)

 Context examples 

We were waiting for him to do something, to show his hand, so to say, and his inaction puzzled and worried us.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

But to be waiting so long in inaction, and waiting only for evil, had been dreadful.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

He paced restlessly about our sitting-room in a fever of suppressed energy, biting his nails, tapping the furniture, and chafing against inaction.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

As to the arrest of John Mitton, the valet, it was a council of despair as an alternative to absolute inaction.

(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

They were appalled by inaction and by the feel of something terrible impending.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

You could not walk the streets without catching sight of the gipsy-faced, keen-eyed men whose plain clothes told of their thin purses as plainly as their listless air showed their weariness of a life of forced and unaccustomed inaction.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Nothing is more painful to the human mind than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows and deprives the soul both of hope and fear.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

You can imagine with what eagerness I listened to him, Watson, for the very chance for which I had been panting during all those months of inaction seemed to have come within my reach.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

A full stomach conduces to inaction, and the cub lay in the cave, sleeping against his mother's side.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The interval was, consequently, spent in inaction; his grief only became more deep and rankling when he had leisure for reflection, and at length it took so fast hold of his mind that at the end of three months he lay on a bed of sickness, incapable of any exertion.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)