Aug 12, 2010there are 88 examples of inactivate in the corpus of contemporary american english and 102 for deactivate, showing they occur with about equal frequency. May 19, 2020inactive contacts are those contacts which have been dormant for a particular amount of time. Mar 11, 2016apparently, “inactivate” is used as frequently as “deactivate” but mostly in biology, rather than in general contexts.