dormant

Etymology

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

adj

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.
   It is by lying dormant a long time, or being at first very rarely exercised, that arbitrary power steals upon a people. 1777, Edmund Burke, 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
   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. 1992, Richard Nixon, “The Pacific Triangle”, in Seize the Moment, Simon & Schuster, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 179
   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. 2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →OCLC, PC, scene: Thresher Maws Codex entry
2. (heraldry) In a sleeping posture; distinguished from couchant.
   a lion dormant
3. (architecture) Leaning.

noun

1. (architecture) A crossbeam or joist.