PASSIVITY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Passivity

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/pəsˈɪvɪti/ Listen

noun

Passivity n.

Passiveness; opposed to activity.

(Physics) The tendency of a body to remain in a given state, either of motion or rest, till disturbed by another body; inertia.

(Chem.) The quality or condition of any substance which has no inclination to chemical activity; inactivity.

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Etymology of 'Passivity'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Passivity" Quotes from Famous Books

... in an undertone. He was a well-made fellow with a certain slouching grace about him as he sat on his load of corn; but there were evil promising bumps on either side of his jaws that spoke of obstinacy, even of ferocity; and there was something menacing in his surly passivity of attitude. He looked at the girl and his lip lifted with a ...

— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... her, but nearly all women do it in one sort or another, from love of a voluntary submission, or from a fear of their own ignorance, if they are younger and more inexperienced than their lieges. Neither the one passion nor the other seems to reduce them to a like passivity as regards their husbands. They must apparently have a fetish of their own sex. Colville could see that Imogene obeyed Mrs. Bowen not only as a protegee ...

— Indian Summer • William D. Howells

... People living in such a climate have great need for activity, both in order to secure the means of subsistence and in order to keep themselves warm. Thus we find that the low, flat nose is everywhere the nose of indolence and passivity, while the large nose, high in the bridge, is everywhere an ...

— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb

... about on a sunny morning in a picturesque foreign town, in that delicious mood when the smallest sights and sounds and incidents have a sharpness and delicacy of flavour which brings back the untroubled and joyful passivity of childhood, when one had no need to do anything in particular, because it was enough to be. It seemed so futile to go on consuming stolidly and grimly the porridge of life, when one might take one's choice of its dainties! I had no temptation to waste my substance in riotous ...

— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... few days dwelt in Odo's memory as a blur of strange sights and sounds. The super-acute state of his perceptions was succeeded after a night's sleep by the natural passivity with which children accept the improbable, so that he passed from one novel impression to another as easily and with the same exhilaration as if he had been listening to a fairy tale. Solitude and neglect had no surprises ...

— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

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