The only thing that I find more depressing than this charlatan is the passivity of the museum-goers who pass before his works: they may have an inkling that they are being had, but they are unable to trust the evidence of their eyes. Jed Perl
… and now she was condemned to years of genteel English poverty by a passivity stubborn as low-grade fever. Vivian Gornick
The implication—that American policy makers had, out of some combination of timorous passivity and treasonous perfidy, lost China to Communism—set off one of the darkest-ever turns in American civic life. Daniel Kurtz-Phelan
2
chemistry: a chemically inactive state—used especially of a metal that has lost its normal chemical activity and is resistant to corrosion
The lower limit of 11% is based on the markedly increased corrosion resistance and spontaneous passivity obtained at this level. Donald H. DeClerck et al.