Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The character or condition of being immobile or irremovable; fixedness.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The condition or quality of being immobile; fixedness in place or state.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun the quality of not moving
  • noun the state or condition of being unable to change one's location, move or be moved

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun the quality of not moving
  • noun remaining in place

Etymologies

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Examples

  • That alone which he describes as immobility belongs to the circular movement.

    Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province Aquinas Thomas

  • But there's less evidence that the problem of income immobility is growing.

    Inequality, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty 2009

  • But, on the other hand, the phenomenon I would call segregation, in its proper meaning of isolation or immobility, is very pervasive.

    Distribution of Income in Canada 1973

  • All these things are based upon the idea that the child should grow in immobility, and upon the strange prejudice that, in order to execute any educational movement, we must maintain a special position of the body; – as we believe that we must assume a special position when we are about to pray.

    The Montessori Method Anne E. Montessori George 1912

  • Sports therapists and physicians have long been suggesting various forms of rehabilitation for this injury to suit their active needs, but what is the most favorable therapy for vigorous individuals who wouldn't settle for long-term immobility?

    Recently Uploaded Slideshows Firheat 2010

  • For a nine-year-old boy, the immobility was the worst form of torture.

    Hope Unseen Captain Scott M. Smiley 2010

  • For a nine-year-old boy, the immobility was the worst form of torture.

    Hope Unseen Captain Scott M. Smiley 2010

  • He described an initial, short-lasting episode of motor symptoms characterized by immobility, posturing, and waxy flexibility that ended in a hyperkinetic state; a second stage of melancholia often with stupor; a third stage of “exaltation and rapid and pressured speech” “a certain pathos-filled ‘ecstasy’ this entrains a compulsion to talk in oratorical style”; and, finally, after recurrent exacerbations and remissions of states of passivity and exaltation, an end stage of dementia.

    The Neuropsychiatric Guide to Modern Everyday Psychiatry Michael Alan Taylor 1993

  • At the root of the hysterical fear of premature burial was the fact that physicians recognized, and patients suffered, a number of peculiar conditions characterized by immobility and insensibility, and known variously as trance, catalepsy, cataplexy, and suspended animation.

    The Serpent and the Rainbow Wade Davis 1985

  • Her eyes confronted the stone and her whole being froze in immobility.

    Prudence Crandall, Woman of Courage 1955

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