Definitions

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Not endowed with life; same as inanimate. Opposite of living and animate.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Alternative spelling of non-living.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective not endowed with life
  • adjective not endowed with life

Etymologies

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Examples

  • The researchers who sequenced the genome found that it had highly unusual abilities to directly take in needed carbon and nitrogen from nonliving sources—very useful abilities given the absence of carbon-based life in its isolated and unrelentingly harsh environment.

    First Contact Marc Kaufman 2011

  • So some scientists are trying to make life out of nonliving elements and compounds in their labs.

    First Contact Marc Kaufman 2011

  • Tom Nickles has also been lured into the borderlands of desert varnish, and he is now conducting the experiment he believes will finally determine whether living bacteria or nonliving chemicals are responsible for the coverings.

    First Contact Marc Kaufman 2011

  • Benner is in the genetics camp, which is why the origins-of-life component of his lab spends its time searching for ways to form the scaffolding of RNA or DNA out of nonliving parts.

    First Contact Marc Kaufman 2011

  • They impose a distinctly biological structure onto their nonliving surroundings, and they also can and usually will concentrate certain elements or minerals in the process.

    First Contact Marc Kaufman 2011

  • We will never know for sure how that initial transformation from nonliving to living occurred because the evidence is gone.

    First Contact Marc Kaufman 2011

  • S Patrice: Welder 4 has four hours before becoming truly nonliving, but has twenty hours of breathable atmosphere on board.

    365 tomorrows » 2010 » June : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day 2010

  • It follows that mind - concious, rational intelligent agency - what philosophers call "agent causation", now stands as the only cause known to be capable of generating large amounts of specified information from a nonliving state

    Casey Luskin on Kitzmiller & Information 2010

  • S Patrice: Welder 4 has four hours before becoming truly nonliving, but has twenty hours of breathable atmosphere on board.

    365 tomorrows » submission : A New Free Flash Fiction SciFi Story Every Day 2010

  • One of those labs will soon have produced self-replicating genetic material out of nonliving component parts—in other words, created something very life-like from synthesized genetic material.

    First Contact Marc Kaufman 2011

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