PASSIVITY • E-FREE TRANSLATION.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

... which pervades his words? For one traces something of him, often enough, in the old gardens, and down the hidden streets; one has heard his footstep beside the quiet waters of Magdalen; and his smile still hovers amid that strange company of faces which guard, with such a large passivity, the ...

— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... is a sad story, the story of philology! The disgusting erudition, the lazy, inactive passivity, the timid ...

— We Philologists, Volume 8 (of 18) • Friedrich Nietzsche

... that's the way it always has been, and always will be; some are born to suffer, others not. You can't have mountains without valleys. The war seemed perfectly idiotic to him, but he would not have lifted a finger to prevent it. He had in his way the fatalist passivity of the people, which hides itself, on Gallic soil, behind a veil of ironic carelessness. The "no use in getting in a sweat about it," of the trenches. Then there is also that false pride of the French, who fear nothing so much as ridicule, and would risk death twenty times over for something ...

— Clerambault - The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War • Rolland, Romain

... intention of changing to humbler rooms and hiding therein from his world, he did not meditate any definite activity. The feeling at the bottom of his mind was rather that events would shape themselves. To this attitude of passivity his whole life had tended. His will-strength had gone into his passionate desire of poetic achievement, and were it not that he had, so to speak, grown into relation with others, his life would have been utterly static. The movement of their lives alone had taken his along. He had ...

— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill

... shake off the masterful old hand, but she would not. A sad passivity became her best unless she relinquished every possible result of the last ten minutes. And it must have had some result. Jeff had, at least, been partly won. Surely there was an implied intimacy in his quick undertone ...

— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

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