lethargy

lethargy, languor, lassitude, stupor, torpor, torpidity are comparable when meaning physical and mental inertness.

Lethargy implies a state marked by an aversion to activity which may be constitutional but is typically induced by disease, extreme fatigue or exhaustion, overeating or overdrinking, or constant frustration and which exhibits itself in drowsiness or apathy

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what means this heaviness that hangs upon me? This lethargy that creeps through all my senses? Nature, oppressed and harassed out with care, sinks down to rest— Addison

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the state of apathy and lethargy into which they had been thrust by their stunning defeat— Political Science Quarterly

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Languor (compare LANGUID) has nearly lost its basic application to a condition of weakness, faintness, or delicacy of constitution induced by illness and serving as a bar to exertion or effort

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I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness— M. W. Shelley

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and has come to imply an inertia such as results from soft living, from an enervating climate, or from amorous emotion

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intervals of repose, which though agreeable for a moment, yet if prolonged beget a languor and lethargy that destroy all enjoyment— Hume

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she is characterized essentially by languor. Her most familiar posture is on a bed or divan— Fowlie

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instead of the languor of the tropics, they seem to have acquired ... a good deal of our energy and enthusiasm— Eleanor Roosevelt

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Lassitude implies such a listless seedy mental or physical condition as may result from strain, overwork, poor health, or intense worry; it usually connotes an inertia of mind or body which one has not the strength to fight

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the results of overstrained energies are feebleness and lassitude— Borrow

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she sat for twenty minutes or more ere she could summon resolution to go down to the door, her courage being lowered to zero by her physical lassitude— Hardy

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an overpowering lassitude, an extreme desire simply to sit and dream— Moorehead

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Stupor implies a state of heaviness when the mind is deadened (as by extreme drowsiness, intoxication, narcotic poisoning, or the coma of illness); the term may imply any state from a dreamy trancelike condition to almost complete unconsciousness

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there is . . . something almost narcotic in such medieval poetry; one is lulled into a pleasing stupor— Lowes

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was in a stupor of mental weariness— Anderson

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had collapsed for the moment in a stupor of pain— Steen

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Torpor and torpidity basically suggest the condition of a hibernating animal which has lost all power of exertion or of feeling

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a poorwill found during the winter . . . which was in a state of profound torpidity—F. C. Lincoln

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Both terms, especially when employed in reference to persons, usually imply extreme sluggishness and inertness (as in some forms of insanity); torpidity, however, probably more often applies to a physical condition and torpor to a mental state

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blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and . . . reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor— Wordsworth

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a deathlike torpor has succeeded to her former intellectual activity— Prescott

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in a world of torpidities any rapid moving thing is hailed— Birrell

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the torpidity which the last solitary tourist, flying with the yellow leaves . . . had left them to enjoy till the returning spring— Peacock

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Analogous words: sluggishness, comatoseness (see corresponding adjectives at LETHARGIC): indolence, slothfulness or sloth, laziness (see corresponding adjectives at LAZY): inertness or inertia, inactivity, idleness, passiveness, supineness (see corresponding adjectives at INACTIVE): apathy, phlegm, impassivity (see under IMPASSIVE)

Antonyms: vigor

Contrasted words: quickness, readiness, promptness, aptness (see corresponding adjectives at QUICK): alertness, quick-wittedness (see corresponding adjectives at INTELLIGENT)