languid

languid, languishing, languorous, lackadaisical, listless, spiritless, enervated are comparable when they mean lacking in vim or energy or, when applied to things, the appearance of it.

Languid usually implies an unwillingness or an inability to exert oneself owing to fatigue, exhaustion, or physical weakness

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struck by something languid and inelastic in her attitude, and wondered if the deadly monotony of their lives had laid its weight on her also— Wharton

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walked from the room with languid deliberate steps; . . . she moved as though she were intolerably weary— Wylie

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Languishing may suggest delicate indolence, often accompanying boredom or futilely wistful pensiveness and often connotes an affected rather than a real state

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a languishing gaze

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with their languishing, sorrowful melodies . . . with their high-flown sentimental- ism, these ballads reflected . . . stale romanticism— Mooney

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Languorous carries a suggestion of languidness and delicacy acquired through soft living, through shrinking from exertion, or through sentimentalism or overindulgence in tender or amorous emotions

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sought out rich words with which to re-create the languorous, stilling beauty of the Old South— Springfield Republican

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a poignant perfume, soft and languorous, all-enveloping and heart-stirring— Kenneth Roberts

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her shaded lids . . . were languorous from my kisses, and gave ... an inebriat-ing love-bemused and longing-solemn look— Edmund Wilson

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Lackadaisical implies a carefree or indifferent attitude that either forbids exertion or makes for futile, piddling, or halfhearted and indolent efforts

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at the terrific tempo of mechanized war, lackadaisical men, lacking in self-confidence and slow to obey are lost— G. S. Patton

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a lackadaisical river town that tolerated a generous amount of vice— T. D. Clark

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Listless need not imply physical weakness, but it almost invariably implies either a lack of interest in what is going on around one or in what one is doing, or a languid appearance that may be the result either of boredom or ennui or of fatigue or disease

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the child has grown thin, white, and listless within the past two months

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suddenly relaxed into a listless attitude of sullen tractability— S. S. Van Dine

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they were effete, weary, burnt-out revolutionists, whose listless voices slid sleepily over their melodies— Mooney

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Spiritless implies the loss or the absence of the animation or fire that gives life or dash to a person or to his words and acts

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a spiritless performance of a play

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dominated the starving, spiritless wretches under him with savage enjoyment— Mason

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no courage can repel the dire assault; distracted, spiritless, benumbed, and blind, whole legions sink— Wordsworth

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Enervated implies a destruction of qualities or powers essential to the vigorous exercise of the will and the intellect. Often it suggests the influence of luxury or of sloth but it may imply the operation of other causes, even of those that in themselves are not evil but may have deleterious effects

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the enervated and sickly habits of the literary class— Emerson

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society in Rome, enervated as it was by vicious pleasures, craved continually for new excitements— Froude

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that enervated, run-down condition that is commonly known as Southern gentility— Basso

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Analogous words: *lethargic, sluggish, comatose, torpid: phlegmatic, apathetic, *impassive: inert, *inactive, supine

Antonyms: vivacious: chipper