adjective

• 1(of a substance or material) not elastic.

  ‘The cuff is an inelastic cloth that encircles the arm and encloses the inflatable rubber bladder.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Some polymers stretch to 10 times their length, whereas metals are relatively inelastic, he says.’
  • ‘Graduated compression therapy to overcome venous hypertension is useful and can be applied using inelastic or elastic bandages.’
  • ‘Fibroblasts grow into the exudate from both the visceral and parietal pleural surface to produce an inelastic membrane called the pleural peel.’
  • ‘It is a malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic.’
  • ‘A new method for determining the presence of inelastic compressive strain at any location in a tree was devised.’
  • ‘When the calf muscles press against the rigid, inelastic bandage, they pump more effectively facilitating removal of fluid from the extremity.’
  • ‘This is characterized by the appearance of wrinkles, dry, inelastic leathery skin and irregular pigmentation.’
  • ‘I've been knitting with so many inelastic yarns (cotton, cotton/silk, etc), that I really wanted to work with wool.’
  • ‘When the deformation exceeds the elastic limit of the object, it undergoes inelastic deformation.’
  • ‘Without the magic elixir of paper money, borrowers would face insufficient liquidity, an excessively rigid credit system, and an inelastic monetary system.’
  • ‘Over time, too much sun can age the skin, making it leathery and inelastic.’
  • ‘But late signs can be severe including sunken eyes, inelastic skin and without urine output.’
  • ‘Thirdly, the cost of living is higher in the cities and fairly inelastic.’
  • ‘That's the mantra of many a hack desperate to meet an inelastic deadline or dying to use a bombastic headline.’
  • ‘A sheet or band of tough, inelastic, fibrous connective tissue.’
  • ‘Surprisingly, these inelastic pedagogic methods were extremely successful, and Post was a very popular teacher.’
  • ‘Fluid resuscitation leads to the development of burn wound oedema and swelling of the tissue beneath this inelastic burnt tissue.’

  Synonyms

  hard, solid, unyielding, resistant

• 2Economics
  (of demand or supply) insensitive to changes in price or income.

  ‘With an inelastic demand, much lower prices and lower incomes (excluding large increases in subsidies) resulted.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘A slight drop in price does not endear the other newspaper - more or less newspaper demand is price inelastic.’
  • ‘If this occurs, rice prices would decline, given that the demand for rice is relatively inelastic.’
  • ‘Some commodities are described as being elastic; others as inelastic.’
  • ‘Most of the increase in consumption will occur in the transportation sector where demand for petroleum is inelastic.’

• 3Physics
  (of a collision) involving an overall loss of translational kinetic energy.

  ‘In mechanical systems, there is always a certain amount of energy lost as heat due to frictional processes and inelastic collisions between moving parts.’

  More example sentences

  • ‘This transfer occurs when a photon undergoes an inelastic collision with a molecule, and energy is either imparted to or obtained from the material.’
  • ‘Suppose further that a net amount of energy E is emitted in this inelastic collision, say in the form of heat.’
  • ‘There are more than three times more inelastic electrons than elastic ones in electrons scattered by ice.’
  • ‘We present elastic and inelastic incoherent neutron scattering data from a series of trehalose glasses diluted with glycerol.’