inert
/ɪˈnəːt
/- ‘We're looking for people who in 15 minutes can make an inert audience move,’ explains Jonny Rocket, who, with his wife Lisa, has organised the free event.
- Two hours later, we watched through glass as her inert body was wheeled into the intensive care recovery.
- Another man strode by with the inert body of a young child in his arms.
Synonyms
- Our political parties are inert, and that's the reason behind the emergence of the radical groups which are filling in the political vacuum.
- Meanwhile, the intention is to turn whole command and control agencies into passive, inert organisms.
- So is it just an unwillingness on the part of an inert legal community in this country that the jury system has not been adequately researched?
- Airborne CFCs, which were relatively inert near Earth's surface, were being decomposed by sunlight in the upper atmosphere, releasing free chlorine atoms.
- Neon is the second element in Group 18 of the periodic table, a group of elements known as the inert or noble gases.
Synonyms
Derivatives
inertly
/ adverb ...- Collective memory is a people's heritage and also its energy; it does not merely sit there inertly, but it must be activated as part of a people's identity and sense of its own prerogative… to understand who we are and what we are doing.
- Barbaro is seen clearly distressed and confused, the lower part of his injured leg flopping inertly.
- The local is thus not conceived as existing inertly against a backdrop of global forces, but rather as constructed through this dynamic.
inertness
/ noun ...- Titanium has become the material of choice for implantable devices because of its strength, weight, and inertness to body fluids.
- I shook off my inertness and reached out to touch her arm.
- It is insoluble in water and it has a relative chemical inertness.
Origin
Mid 17th century: from Latin iners, inert- 'unskilled, inactive', from in- (expressing negation) + ars, art- 'skill, art'.
art from Middle English:
Originally art was simply ‘skill at doing something’. Its use in the modern sense dates from the early 17th century. The word comes from Latin ars, from a base which meant ‘to put together, join, or fit’. There are many related words which stress the more practical roots of the word. These include artefact (early 19th century) from Latin arte factum ‘something made by art’; artifice (Late Middle English) from the same roots; and artisan from the Latin for ‘instructed in the arts’. The phrase art for art's sake conveys the idea that the chief or only aim of a work of art is the self-expression of the artist who creates it. It was the slogan of the Aesthetic Movement, which flourished in England during the 1880s. The Latin version of the phrase, ars gratia artis, is the motto of the film company MGM, and appears around the roaring lion in its famous logo. Art deco, was shortened from French art décoratif ‘decorative art’, from the 1925 Exhibition title Exposition des Arts décoratifs in Paris. Latin iners which gives us inert (mid 17th century) and inertia (early 18th century) meant ‘unskilled, inactive’, and was formed as the opposite of ars.