dormant
/ˈdoɹmənt/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: 3.41 in modern English
10
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
2
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
In a sleeping posture; distinguished from couchant.
adj
Example Sentences
- "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."
- "It is by lying dormant a long time, or being at first very rarely exercised, that arbitrary power steals upon a people."
- "The repression at Tiananmen Square dealt a serious but not fatal blow to the pro-democracy movement. It has been forced to lie dormant until a future moment of opportunity. As the revolutions in Eastern Europe proved, however, that moment will eventually come."
- "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."
Etymology
From Middle English, from Old French, from Latin dormiēns, present participle of dormiō (“to sleep”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈdoɹmənt/
- British English: /ˈdɔːmənt/