entry
impassive
/ɪmˈpæsɪv/Showing no emotion or feeling
From Latin im- (not) + Latin passive (suffering).
Word Ancestry
Romans gave us a nasty little prefix, in-, that turns into im- before p and b, as neat as a tailor’s tuck. Then Latin passivus came along from pati, “to suffer,” the same family that gives us passion, patient, and even pity—words that all have a bruise somewhere in their history. Put the two together and you get a person who is literally “not suffering” in the obvious outward way, which is why the earliest English use in the 1660s meant not feeling pain. By the 1690s it had slid toward the colder, more modern idea: the face that gives nothing away, the poker player at the tavern table. If passive resistance later became a political phrase—Scott uses it in Ivanhoe in 1819, and Gandhi made it famous again around 1906—impassive is the raised eyebrow beside it, the human version of a locked door.
The Story
Romans gave us a nasty little prefix, in-, that turns into im- before p and b, as neat as a tailor’s tuck. Then Latin passivus came along from pati, “to suffer,” the same family that gives us passion, patient, and even pity—words that all have a bruise somewhere in their history. Put the two together and you get a person who is literally “not suffering” in the obvious outward way, which is why the earliest English use in the 1660s meant not feeling pain. By the 1690s it had slid toward the colder, more modern idea: the face that gives nothing away, the poker player at the tavern table. If passive resistance later became a political phrase—Scott uses it in Ivanhoe in 1819, and Gandhi made it famous again around 1906—impassive is the raised eyebrow beside it, the human version of a locked door.
Kin & Kindred
From 'im-'·not, opposite of
Derived Terms
English words from this root
From 'passive'·suffering, enduring, capable of being acted upon
Derived Terms
English words from this root
Sources
Etymonline
Free Dictionary
Urban Dictionary
Wikipedia