dormant
/ˈdɔːmənt/adjective
Not active for a period of time, as if asleep, but able to become active again.
Example sentences
- “The volcano has been dormant for over two hundred years.”
- “Many plants stay dormant until the warm weather returns.”
Volcanoes are the textbook example: dormant means quiet but not extinct. Accounts, seeds, and viruses also lie dormant.