lie dormant

1. 1.

   be inactive, as if asleep

   “His work lay dormant for many years”

Questions about lie dormant

What does lie dormant mean?

lie dormant means "be inactive, as if asleep".

Is lie dormant a common word?

lie dormant is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.