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inertia. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
inertia, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
inertia in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
inertia you have here. The definition of the word
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English
Etymology
From Latin inertia (“lack of art or skill, inactivity, indolence”), from iners (“unskilled, inactive”), from in- (“without, not”) + ars (“skill, art”). The modern physics sense was first used in New Latin by Johannes Kepler.
Pronunciation
Noun
inertia (countable and uncountable, plural inertias or inertiae or inertiæ)
- (physics, uncountable or countable) The property of a body that resists any change to its uniform motion; equivalent to its mass.
- (figuratively) In a person, unwillingness to take action.
1970 August 12 [1969 January 15], John Womack, Jr., Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, →OL, page 261:Not all the surviving veteran chiefs would actually fight. Some remained nominally in the resistance but in practice delayed at their bases, pretexting a lack of ammunition for their uncertain inertia.
- (medicine) Lack of activity; sluggishness; said especially of the uterus, when, in labour, its contractions have nearly or wholly ceased.
Synonyms
Derived terms
Translations
in physics
- Arabic: عَطَالَة f (ʕaṭāla)
- Armenian: please add this translation if you can
- Azerbaijani: ətalət
- Bulgarian: инерция (bg) f (inercija)
- Catalan: inèrcia (ca) f
- Chinese:
- Mandarin: 慣性 / 惯性 (zh) (guànxìng)
- Czech: setrvačnost (cs) f
- Dutch: inertie (nl), traagheid (nl)
- Esperanto: inerteco, inerteca forto, inertforto
- Estonian: inerts, inertsus
- Finnish: hitaus (fi), inertia (fi), vitka (fi), jatkavuus
- French: inertie (fr) f
- Georgian: please add this translation if you can
- German: Trägheit (de) f, Beharrungsvermögen (de) n, Beharrung f
- Greek: αδράνεια (el) f (adráneia)
- Hawaiian: ehuō
- Hindi: अक्रियता (hi) f (akriytā)
- Hungarian: tehetetlenség (hu)
- Irish: táimhe f
- Italian: inerzia (it) f
- Japanese: 慣性 (ja) (かんせい, kansei)
- Kazakh: инерция (inersiä)
- Khmer: និចលភាព (nĭchlôphéap)
- Latvian: inerce f
- Malay: inersia (ms)
- Malayalam: ജഡത്വം (jaḍatvaṁ)
- Maori: tūpuku
- Mongolian: please add this translation if you can
- Norwegian: treghet (no), treighet m
- Polish: bezwładność (pl) f, inercja (pl) f
- Portuguese: inércia (pt)
- Romanian: inerție (ro) f
- Russian: ине́рция (ru) f (inɛ́rcija)
- Scottish Gaelic: do-mhùthadh m
- Spanish: inercia (es) f
- Swedish: tröghet (sv)
- Tagalog: tigal
- Tamil: சடத்துவம் (ta) (caṭattuvam), நிலைமம் (nilaimam)
- Telugu: జడత్వము (te) (jaḍatvamu)
- Thai: ความเฉื่อย (th) (kwaam-chʉ̀ai)
- Turkish: eylemsizlik (tr)
- Ukrainian: іне́рція f (inércija)
- Vietnamese: quán tính (vi) (慣性)
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unwillingness to take action
Further reading
- “inertia”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.
- “inertia”, in The Century Dictionary , New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911, →OCLC.
- “inertia”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
Anagrams
Finnish
Etymology
From Latin inertia.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈinertiɑ/,
- Rhymes: -iɑ
- Hyphenation(key): iner‧tia
Noun
inertia
- inertia
- Synonyms: hitaus, vitka, jatkavuus
Declension
Derived terms
(compounds):
Further reading
Latin
Etymology
From Proto-Italic *enartjā. Related to iners (“without skill; inactive”), from in- (“not”) + ars (“art, skill”).
Pronunciation
Noun
inertia f (genitive inertiae); first declension
- want of art or skill, unskillfulness, ignorance
- Antonyms: calliditās, sapientia
- (by extension) inactivity, idleness, laziness, indolence
- Synonyms: pigritia, sēgnitia, ignāvia, dēsidia, sōcordia, ōtium
- Antonyms: impigritās, alacritās, strēnuitās, āctīvitās
Declension
First-declension noun.
Descendants
References
- “inertia”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- “inertia”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
- inertia in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
- inertia in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette.
Norwegian Bokmål
Noun
inertia m (definite singular inertiaen, indefinite plural inertiaer, definite plural inertiaene)
- form removed with the spelling reform of 2005; superseded by inerti