Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Physics The tendency of a body to resist acceleration; the tendency of a body at rest to remain at rest or of a body in straight line motion to stay in motion in a straight line unless acted on by an outside force.
- n. Resistance or disinclination to motion, action, or change: the inertia of an entrenched bureaucracy.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. Lack of activity; sluggishness; passiveness; inertness.
- n. In physics, that property of matter by virtue of which it retains its state of rest or of uniform rectilinear motion so long as no foreign cause changes that state. Also called vis inertiæ (force of inertia). Quantitatively considered, inertia is the same as mass. The term was introduced by Kepler. See
mass and momentum. - n. In medicine, want of activity; sluggishness: a term especially applied to the condition of the uterus when it does not contract properly in parturition.
- n. With regard to a plane or point, the sum of the elements of mass each multiplied by the square of its distance from the given plane or point.
Wiktionary
- n. physics The property of a body that resists any change to its uniform motion; equivalent to its mass.
- n. figuratively In a person, unwillingness to take action.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Physics) That property of matter by which it tends when at rest to remain so, and when in motion to continue in motion, and in the same straight line or direction, unless acted on by some external force; -- sometimes called
vis inertiæ . Theinertia of a body is proportional to its mass. - n. Inertness; indisposition to motion, exertion, or action; lack of energy; sluggishness.
- n. (Med.) Lack of activity; sluggishness; -- said especially of the uterus, when, in labor, its contractions have nearly or wholly ceased.
WordNet 3.0
- n. (physics) the tendency of a body to maintain its state of rest or uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force
- n. a disposition to remain inactive or inert
Etymologies
- From Latin inertia ("lack of art or skill, inactivity, indolence"), from iners ("unskilled, inactive"), from in- ("without, not") + ars ("skill, art"). (Wiktionary)
- Latin, idleness, from iners, inert-, inert; see inert. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Posted September 21, 2004 2: 02 PM beingtrue writes: the inertia is the main reason for the failure of ideas. any reform will make someone lose temperarily.”
Ideas and Growth, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
“Instead, he had to give some ground, admit that he's not going to meet this August deadline he's been demanding to combat what he calls inertia back in Washington.”
“But now it appears we have a return of the "old" Jerry Angelo -- the man who defines the word inertia.”
“Chubin uses the word "inertia" to describe the steady progress of Iran's nuclear program.”
“What I found depressing about the fan-shop was that it represented a cultural reinforcement ( "inertia" is too passive a term) of bad game cliches.”
“Moreover, if birth rates were the whole story, then evangelical growth should have been visible between successive birth cohorts, not within them, but that is also not the case.37 Finally, the long-term inertia of demographic arithmetic should have continued to push up the evangelical share of the population for at least several decades more, even after the evangelical birth rate converged to the nonevangelical birth rate.”
“There is a certain inertia to poulation growth — mathematically described by Nathan Keyfitz — that means we cannot escape the short and intermediate term consequences of our demographic destinies even if vital rates were to improbably shift rapidly and in ways to offset current trends.”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Comparative Demographic Charts on Aging Populations
“Ego, in this context, is defined as inertia -- an anti-evolutionary posture of narcissism and self-concern that is based upon the conviction, conscious or unconscious, that something fundamental is terribly, terribly wrong.”
“I feel very strongly that RTD could still pull a pony out of his sack for the Rose/Ten fans ... but inertia is already dragging that show down.”
“The inertia is such that if a case is bought then there is a judicial presumption that the investigators have done their job properly.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘inertia’.
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2046 more...
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random
good words that i think of at random times.
billow, microcosm, inertia, ecstatic, zesty, secure, amicable, tedious, free, nostalgia, halo, clean and 12 more...
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It's All Just Words.
quixotic, penisaurus rex, plibt, pot, polaroid, gemütlichkeit, hey! pooper scoop..., nowhere, anywhere, somewhere, elsewhere, wherever and 80 more...
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Bodily
wigwag, caprae, hylozoism, abiogenesis, whorl, entropy, anima, anthropoid, avatar, symbiont, symbiote, android and 34 more...
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passive
words of inaction
tepid, languid, stagnant, inertia, effete, mired, soporific, reticent, taciturn, mollify, nebbish, milquetoast and 13 more...
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Lexicomaniac
cicatrix, ingeminate, durcheinander, crêpe, soporific, papaverous, archaic, enucleate, falchion, gravitic, pseudorandom, thorp and 10 more...
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intueri's Words
inveigle, dolorous, archly, feckless, resplendent, concatenation, peripatetic, delightful, cookie, fey, ephemeral, effervescent and 347 more...
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Latinate
lorem ipsum, citius, altius, fortius, curriculum vitae, bona fide, terra nullius, habeas corpus, quidnunc, voir dire, emeritus, quincunx and 99 more...
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Wordplay
reticent, slammerkin, moonstruck, zephyr, gallivant, hullabaloo, pandemonium, equestrian, wallflower, martyr, threadbare, treacherous and 180 more...
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Words from "Pearls Before Breakfast"
nondescript, shrewd, seed money, bureaucrat, indeterminate, fungible, cupidity, banal, grandeur, utilitarian, buffer, ecstatic and 123 more...
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know-it-all
eunuch, couvade, ecclesiastes, enigma, inevitable, crucible, genteel, bedlam, baculum, scapulimancy, atrophy, smut and 170 more...
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Nightbloom's List
adumbrate, beatific, blandiloquent, caliginous, champagne, anointed, chatoyant, chiaroscuro, diffuse, dulcet, ebullient, efflorescence and 94 more...
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ADW1
obdurate, obstinate, behest, injunction, enjoin, circumspect, ensconce, discursive, lugubrious, doleful, somber, ken and 2476 more...
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lanas's Words
serendipitous, insouciant, charming, sanguine, dear, odd, quaint, small, tremble, blush, flirt, tryst and 248 more...
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chibiryuu's Words
sugary, amalgam, zaftig, incommensurability, isomorphism, fold, awesome, cute, hack, dichotomy, pyrrhic, bifurcate and 89 more...
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Dain's Words
rabble, terminus, archaic, atavism, demiurge, waylay, syzygy, jocoserious, quark, entropy, cinnabar, shamble and 912 more...
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