The apparently sublime power of the volcano was largely the result of an initially supine reaction.

ECONOMIST: Disasters are about people and planning, not nature��s pomp

Even the supine French court sensed that something nasty was happening in Paris in the 1780s.

ECONOMIST: Ren�� Thom

Antigua's financial regulator has lived down to its reputation for being supine even by Caribbean standards.

ECONOMIST: Financial fraud

Lord Puttnam feared that regulators and legislators in Europe and the UK would "remain supine and simply wave this acquisition through".

BBC: Peers welcome Ofcom probe of News Corp's BSkyB bid

That supine stance led to a radical rethinking of their prime-time lineup.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Try this thought experiment: Suppose the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell to 5000 and stayed there, supine and sick with Asian flu, for several years.

FORBES: Digital rules

"Nobody wants a supine, fully deferential BBC - but we do need to see that when the BBC says something, it isn't just recycling gossip, " he said.

BBC: NEWS | Entertainment | BBC outlines post-Hutton reforms

Private-sector investors have been a remarkably supine breed, sitting quietly while they were generally the losers as the banks shared the spoils of apparent growth between employees and owners.

WSJ: Bankers Are Still There for Bashing

But crisis is preferable to supine acquiescence.

CNN: Our Imperial Judiciary

The home secretary at the time, Jim Callaghan, told Parliament how Britain faced a "pharmaceutical revolution" which presented such dangers that if the country was "supine in the face of them" it would quickly lead to "grave dangers to the whole structure of our society".

BBC: Kiwis on drugs: A blueprint for the future?