Inaction

How to spell inaction

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce inaction

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does inaction mean?

1. nounThe lack of action; a failure or refusal to do anything about a situation.

Inaction in a sentence

• The committee's inaction allowed the problem to grow far worse.

• Months of government inaction left the roads in poor repair.

Where does inaction come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word is built from the negative prefix 'in-', meaning 'not', attached to 'action'. 'Action' itself descends from the Latin actio, a noun meaning 'a doing' or 'a performing', which grew from the verb agere, 'to do, drive, or set in motion'. English took 'action' through Old French in the late 1300s, and the compound 'inaction', meaning a failure or refusal to act, appeared later, around the 1700s, when writers needed a tidy single word for the absence of effort. The same agere root quietly powers a large family of English words including 'agent', 'agenda', 'agile', and 'active'. A useful spelling note is that the prefix is simply 'in-' with one 'n', joined to the ordinary word 'action', so the join produces 'inaction' rather than any doubled letter.

How the word is built

• in- (not)
• act (do, from Latin agere)
• -ion (noun suffix)