passivity

noun

pas·​siv·​i·​ty pa-ˈsi-və-tē 

1

: the quality or state of being passive : passiveness

The only thing that I find more depressing than this charlatan is the passivity of the museum-goers who pass before his works: they may have an inkling that they are being had, but they are unable to trust the evidence of their eyes.

—Jed Perl

… and now she was condemned to years of genteel English poverty by a passivity stubborn as low-grade fever.

—Vivian Gornick

The implication—that American policy makers had, out of some combination of timorous passivity and treasonous perfidy, lost China to Communism—set off one of the darkest-ever turns in American civic life.

—Daniel Kurtz-Phelan

2

chemistry : a chemically inactive state

—used especially of a metal that has lost its normal chemical activity and is resistant to corrosion

The lower limit of 11% is based on the markedly increased corrosion resistance and spontaneous passivity obtained at this level.

—Donald H. DeClerck et al.

Examples of passivity in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Or does so only briefly in the ambiguous ending, when Sofia throws off the last vestiges of her passivity and forces her recalcitrant mother into a reckoning with her condition. —David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 14 Feb. 2025

The Gophers turned the ball over on the first possession, and their passivity and indecisiveness were most glaring with three shot-clock violations in the first half. —Andy Greder, Twin Cities, 29 Jan. 2025

There’s little Victorian stuffiness to this Watson, and much of the character’s bumbling passivity from previous adaptations has been shorn off to make room for modern, urgent frustration. —Rory Doherty, Vulture, 24 Jan. 2025

The performance suggests a peacefully harrowing tangle, an inner hurricane of outward passivity, qualities that determine much of the movie’s architecture. —Richard Brody, The New Yorker, 23 Jan. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

1659, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Medical Definition

passivity

noun

pas·​siv·​i·​ty pa-ˈsiv-ət-ē 

plural passivities

: the quality or state of being passive or submissive