dormant

dormant

English

Alternative forms

• dormaunt (obsolete)
• dormient (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English, from Old French, from Latin dormiēns, present participle of dormiō (“I sleep”).

Pronunciation

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈdɔɹmənt/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈdɔːmənt/

• Audio (Berkshire)

  (file)

Adjective

dormant (not comparable)

1. Inactive, sleeping, asleep, suspended.

   Grass goes dormant during the winter, waiting for spring before it grows again.

   The bank account was dormant; there had been no transactions in months.

   This volcano is dormant but not extinct.

   • 1777, Burke, Edmund, A Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, on the Affairs of America; republished in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, volume 2, 1864, page 10:

     It is by lying dormant a long time, or being at first very rarely exercised, that arbitrary power steals upon a people.

   • 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, OCLC 246633669, PC, scene: Thresher Maws Codex entry:

     Thresher maws are subterranean carnivores that spend their entire lives eating or searching for something to eat. Threshers reproduce via spores that lie dormant for millennia, yet are robust enough to survive prolonged periods in deep space and atmospheric re-entry. As a result, thresher spores appear on many worlds, spread by previous generations of space travelers.

2. (heraldry) In a sleeping posture; distinguished from couchant.

   a lion dormant

3. (architecture) Leaning.

Synonyms

• (inactive, suspended): quiescent; see also Thesaurus:inactive

Antonyms

• (inactive, suspended): active
• (volcano: inactive): active, extinct

Derived terms

• dormant volcano
• dormant window
• semidormant

 

Related terms

• dorm
• dormancy
• dormition
• dormitive
• dormitory

Translations

inactive, asleep, suspended

Bulgarian: спящ (bg) (spjašt), латентен (bg) (latenten), неактивен (neaktiven) Catalan: latent Chinese: Mandarin: 睡眠狀態的／睡眠状态的 (shuìmián zhuàngtài de), 休眠 (zh) (xiūmián) Danish: sovende, slumrende, hvilende Dutch: niet actief, slapend (nl), latent (nl) Finnish: horroksessa oleva French: dormant (fr), endormi (fr), inactif (fr) German: schlafend (de), inaktiv (de) Greek: κοιμώμενος m (koimómenos), κοιμισμένος (el) m (koimisménos), αδρανής (el) m or f (adranís) Hungarian: szunnyadó (hu), alvó (hu) Indonesian: terbengkalai (id) Japanese: 休止中の (kyūshichū no), 休眠中の (kyūminchū no) Norwegian: Bokmål: sovende Persian: خفته‎ (fa) (xofte) Polish: uśpiony Portuguese: dormente (pt), inativo (pt) Romanian: inactiv (ro), suspendat (ro) Russian: неакти́вный (ru) (neaktívnyj), спя́щий (ru) (spjáščij), усну́вший (ru) (usnúvšij), лате́нтный (ru) (laténtnyj) Scottish Gaelic: dìomhair Sorbian: Lower Sorbian: spicy Spanish: latente

Noun

dormant (plural dormants)

1. (architecture) A crossbeam or joist.

Further reading

• dormant in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913
• dormant in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911
• dormant at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• mordant

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French

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /dɔʁ.mɑ̃/

• Audio

  (file)

• Audio (CAN)

  (file)

Adjective

dormant (feminine dormante, masculine plural dormants, feminine plural dormantes)

1. dormant
2. asleep

Derived terms

• Belle au bois dormant

Participle

dormant

1. present participle of dormir

Further reading

• “dormant”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

Anagrams

• mordant

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Norman

Verb

dormant

1. present participle of dormi