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Inactivity; habitual sloth; idleness. [Jocular] Carlyle. Miss Austen.

To deprive of liveliness or activity; to render heavy; to make inert; to depress; to weary; to sadden. Attention of mind . . . wasted or dulled through continuance. Hooker.

te ebb and flood of the tide; often used figuratively. This alternation between unhealthy activity and depression, this ebb and flow of the industrial. A. T. Hadley.

ively operative; not inactive, slack, or incapable; characterized by energetic and useful activity; as, an efficient officer, power. The efficient cause is the working cause. Wilson.

nature, a manifestation of energy, exhibiting itself when in disturbed equilibrium or in activity by a circuit movement, the fact of direction in which involves polarity, or opposition of properties in opposite directions; also, by attraction for many substances, by a law involving attraction between surfaces of unlik…

which is undertaken; something attempted to be performed; a work projected which involves activity, courage, energy, and the like; a bold, arduous, or hazardous attempt; an undertaking; as, a manly enterprise; a warlike enterprise. Shak. Their hands can not perform their enterprise. Job v. 12.

e and growth of institutions, manners, language, civilization, and every product of human activity. The agencies and laws of the process are variously explained by different philosophrs. Evolution is to me series with development. Gladstone.

An agent or influence which arouses vital activity, or produces increased action, in a living organism or in any of its tissues or parts; a stimulant.

To call to activity in any way; to rouse to feeling; to kindle to passionate emotion; to stir up to combined or general activity; as, to excite a person, the spirits, the passions; to excite a mutiny or insurrection; to excite heat by friction.

A state of aroused or increased vital activity in an organism, or any of its organs or tissues.

he act of exercising; a setting in action or practicing; employment in the proper mode of activity; exertion; application; use; habitual activity; occupation, in general; practice. exercise of the important function confided by the constitution to the legislature. Jefferson. O we will walk this world, Yoked in all exer…

ing extinct; a putting an end to; the act of putting out or destroying light, fire, life, activity, influence, etc.

some change in the object, as when we say, He made the water wine. Sometimes the idea of activity in a verb or adjective involves in it a reference to an effect, in the way of causality, in the active voice on the immediate objects, and in the passive voice on the subject of such activity. This second object is called…

ecially, an original mental power or capacity for any of the well-known classes of mental activity; psychical or soul capacity; capacity for any of the leading kinds of soul activity, as knowledge, feeling, volition; intellectual endowment or gift; power; as, faculties of the mind or the soul. But know that in the soul…

To deteriorate in respect to vigor, activity, resources, etc.; to become weaker; as, a sick man fails.

Do-nothingness; inactivity; indolence.

To excite or stir up to activity, as a fan axcites a flame; to stimulate; as, this conduct fanned the excitement of the populace. Fanning machine, or Fanning mill, a machine for separating seed from chaff, etc., by a blast of air; a fanner.

or excitement, as of the intellect or the feelings. It puts the soul to fermentation and activity. Jer. Taylor. A univesal fermentation of human thought and faith. C. Kingsley. Acetous, or Acetic, fermentation, a form of oxidation in which alcohol is converted into vinegar or acetic acid by the agency of a specific fu…

A passing humor; a caprice; a sudden and unusual effort, activity, or motion, followed by relaxation or insction; an impulse and irregular action. The fits of the season. Shak.

e prominent and influental; specifically, of authors, painters, etc., to be in a state of activity or production. When all the workers of iniquity do flourish. Ps. xcii 7 Bad men as frequently prosper and flourish, and that by the means of their wickedness. Nelson. We say Of those that held their heads above the crowd,…