languid

Definition

Of a person or animal, or their body functions: flagging from weakness, or inactive or weak, especially due to illness or tiredness; faint, listless.

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French languide (“fatigued, weak; apathetic, indifferent”) (modern French languide), or from its etymon Latin languidus (“faint, weak; dull; slow, sluggish; ill, sick, unwell; (figuratively) inactive, inert, listless”), from langueō (“to be faint or weak; (figuratively) to be idle, inactive, or listless”) (from Proto-Indo-European *(s)leg-, *(s)leh₁g- (“to weaken”)) + -idus (suffix meaning ‘tending to’ forming adjectives). Doublet of languish. Cognates * Italian languido (“languid; languishing”) * Portuguese lânguido (“languid; listless”) * Spanish lánguido (“languid, weak”)

Example Sentences

• "[T]he ſalt of vipers is alſo thought to exceed any other animal ſalt vvhatever, in giving vigour to the languid circulation, and prompting to venery."
• "At first she "ran a temperature" in American parlance, and I could not resist the exquisite caloricity of unexpected delights—Venus febriculosa—though it was a very languid Lolita that moaned and coughed and shivered in my embrace."
• "Loth was he to move / From the imprinted couch, and when he did, / 'Twas with slow, languid paces, and face hid / In muffling hands."

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