inanition

From Old French inanition, from Late Latin inānītio, from inānīre (“to make empty”), from inānis (“empty, vain”); see inane.

• IPA^(key): /ɪnəˈnɪʃən/

inanition (countable and uncountable, plural inanitions)

1. Emptiness; emptying.
   • 1635, David Person, Varieties: or, A Surveigh of Rare and Excellent Matters Necessary and Delectable for All Sorts of Persons, London: Thomas Alchorn, “Of Sleepe and Dreames,” Section 1, pp. 246-247,

     Secondary causes of sleepe are divers; as excessive labour, agitation of the body, repletion, as by excesse of meates or drinkes, inanition, as by Copulation and many more of this kinde, which doe so waste the spirits, that of necessity, there behooveth a cessation to be for a time, that new spirits may be recollected for refreshing of it […]

   • 1643, William Slatyer, The Compleat Christian, London, for the author, The Second Part of the Catechism, Section 5, p. 110,

     3. What meane you by Incarnation?

     His inanition of himselfe, and as it were debasing of himselfe in respect of his majesty of divinity, thereby to put on humanity.

   • 1794, Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia, London: J. Johnson, Volume 1, Section 16, II., p. 137,

     We experience some sensations, and perform some actions before our nativity; the sensations of cold and warmth, agitation and rest, fulness and inanition, are instances of the former […]

2. (medicine) A state of advanced lack of adequate nutrition, food or water, or a physiological inability to utilize them; starvation.
   • 1851, Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, London: George Woodfall & Son, Volume 1, p. 475,

     The Diet of the street-children is in some cases an alternation of surfeit and inanition […]

   • 1955, Samuel Beckett and Patrick Bowles (translators), Molloy by Samuel Beckett, Part I, in Three Novels, New York: Grove, 1959, p. 202,

     And I who a fortnight before would joyfully have reckoned how long I could survive on the provisions that remained, probably with reference to the question of calories and vitamins, and established in my head a series of menus asymptotically approaching nutritional zero, was now content to note feebly that I should soon be dead of inanition.

3. (philosophy) A spiritual emptiness or lack of purpose or will to live, akin to the Existentialist Philosophy state of "nausea".
   • 1900, Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim, Chapter 17,

     I had forced into his hand the means to carry on decently the serious business of life, to get food, drink, and shelter of the customary kind while his wounded spirit, like a bird with a broken wing, might hop and flutter into some hole to die quietly of inanition there.

   • 1939, Graham Greene, The Lawless Roads, Penguin, 2006, Chapter 4, p. 91,

     It was a small celebration: not much money to spend, and an enormous inanition eating away the faith.

• For quotations of use of this term, see Citations:inanition.

• (emptiness): repletion