supine Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. adjective satellite lying face upward
    resupine.
  2. adjective satellite offering no resistance
    resistless; unresisting.
    • resistless hostages
    • No other colony showed such supine, selfish helplessness in allowing her own border citizens to be mercilessly harried"- Theodore Roosevelt

WordNet

Su*pine" adjective
Etymology
L. supinus, akin to sub under, super above. Cf. Sub-, Super-.
Definitions
  1. Lying on the back, or with the face upward; -- opposed to prone.
  2. Leaning backward, or inclining with exposure to the sun; sloping; inclined.
    If the vine On rising ground be placed, or hills supine. Dryden.
  3. Negligent; heedless; indolent; listless.
    He became pusillanimous and supine, and openly exposed to any temptation. Woodward.
    Syn. -- Negligent; heedless; indolent; thoughtless; inattentive; listless; careless; drowsy. -- Su*pine"ly, adv. -- Su*pine"ness, n.
Su"pine noun
Etymology
L. supinum (sc. verbum), from supinus bent or thrown backward, perhaps so called because, although furnished with substantive case endings, it rests or falls back, as it were, on the verb: cf. F. supin.
Definitions
  1. (Lat. Gram.) A verbal noun; or (according to C.F.Becker), a case of the infinitive mood ending in -um and -u, that in -um being sometimes called the former supine, and that in -u the latter supine.

Webster 1913