Advertisement - Continue reading below

Definition of "inoperative" []

  • Not working or functioning. (adjective)
  • No longer in force; countermanded: declared the previous instructions inoperative. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Use "inoperative" in a sentence
  • "“Dallas pays ACS [the camera provider] a guaranteed $3,799 per month for each operational camera, and just a fraction of that to maintain inoperative cameras.”"
  • "This aspect of aesthetic community is not the same as what another French philosopher, Jean-Luc Nancy, terms the "inoperative community," the longing for the original idea of community that was lost or broken in the transition to modernity, the dialectic of what sociologists term Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft."
  • "I'm not sure why the creators of the site felt the need to sneer at attempts to revive the language "The good folk of Adelaide will not accept the learning of an ancient language as a substitute for English because of sentimental reasons"—or why the site renders my Back button inoperative, which is extremely annoying—but it's an interesting enough site I'm posting it anyway."