0 (of a law, rule, etc.) not having effect or power, or (of a machine, system, etc.) not working or not able to work as usual:
1 if a law or rule is inoperative, it does not have any effect and cannot be used:
Legislation to repeal inoperative provisions in the tax law was approved.
2 if a machine, system, etc. is inoperative, it does not work as it should and cannot be used:
So we can agree that many of the ideas, in fact all the ideas of liberal education are totally inoperative in local situations.
As is the case at the local and provincial levels, the national party bureaucracy is largely inoperative.
When she espies the two bodies on the road and applies her brakes, she discovers that they are suddenly inoperative.
But unlike any forces known in gravitational attraction, they had to be conceived as selective, limiting, and inoperative beyond a fixed (stoichiometric) stage.
In fact, who can be heard asserting that market forces were inefcient or inoperative anywhere?
If the experimenter then learns that the thermometer was inoperative at temperatures of 105 or greater but still accurate below 105, should this change the inferences that are made?
However, the scheme was really inoperative, even in 1985, because the old unified procurement price was so low that the market price could hardly drop below it.
This structure is indeed largely inoperative.
