listlessness

English

Etymology

From listless + -ness.

Noun

listlessness (countable and uncountable, plural listlessnesses)

  1. The state of being listless; apathetic indifference; lethargy.
    • 1749, John Cleland, Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, Letter the First,
      But every thing must have an end. A motion made by this angelic youth, in the listlessness of going off sleep, replac'd his shirt and the bed-cloaths in a posture that shut up that treasure from longer view.
    • 1815, Jane Austen, Emma, volume II, chapter 12:
      This sensation of listlessness, weariness, stupidity, this disinclination to sit down and employ myself, this feeling of every thing’s being dull and insipid about the house!— I must be in love; I should be the oddest creature in the world if I were not—for a few weeks at least.
    • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 35,
      [] lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it.

Translations

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.