lethargic

lethargic, sluggish, torpid, comatose are comparable when they mean being by constitution or condition physically and often mentally inert or inactive.

Lethargic usually implies either a constitutional or a temporary or pathological state of sleepiness or drowsiness that makes for slowness in reactions, responses, or movements, or for temperamental apathy

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bullfrogs, in a recent shipment, were quite lethargic . . . and reacted only when they were strongly stimulated— Giese

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gone is the lethargic atmosphere of an apathetic people, hopeless and helpless to direct their own destinies— Atlantic

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not all the industry of a Hercules will suffice to awaken the lethargic brain— Mencken

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but it was no lethargic calm; my brain was more active than ever— Hudson

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Sluggish applies not only to persons but to whatever by its nature moves, acts, or functions; the term implies conditions which create stagnation, inertia, indolence, or inability to proceed at a normal or usual pace

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sluggish attention

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a sluggish pond

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a sluggish circulation

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a sluggish market for securities

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I want no sluggish languor, no bovine complacency. A phenobarbital philosophy does not appeal to me— Warren Weaver

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England has become unenterprising and sluggish because England has been so prosperous and comfortable— H. G. Wells

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Torpid suggests the loss of power of feeling and of exertion; basically it implies the numb or benumbed state of a hibernating animal, but in its more common extended sense it implies a lack of the energy, vigor, and responsiveness that one associates with healthy, vital, active beings

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memory was not so utterly torpid in Silas that it could not be wakened by these words— George Eliot

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still Richard was torpid; could not think or move— Woolf

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Oxford was torpid also, droning along in its eighteenth-century grooves— Brooks

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Comatose basically implies a being in the state of profound insensibility called coma that results from a disease (as diabetes or uremia) which spreads poisons through the system or from severe injury

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the almost comatose condition which had first supervened never developed into a fatal diabetic coma— Ellis

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In extended use comatose implies the stultification of extreme lethargy

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tales . . . guaranteed to shake the most comatose of readers out of the deepest lethargy— advt.

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Analogous words: inert, idle, *inactive, supine, passive: phlegmatic, stolid, *impassive, apathetic: *languid, languorous, lackadaisical, listless: *slow, dilatory, laggard

Antonyms: energetic, vigorous

Contrasted words: alert, quick-witted, *intelligent: *quick, ready, prompt, apt: responsive (see TENDER): *spirited, gingery, peppery