Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Lack of physical or mental energy; listlessness: synonym: lethargy.
  • noun A dreamy, lazy, or sensual quality, as of expression.
  • noun Oppressive stillness, especially of the air.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Faintness or feebleness of body; oppression from fatigue, disease, trouble, or other cause; languidness; dullness; heaviness.
  • noun Sickness; illness; suffering; sorrow.
  • noun Inertness in general; sluggishness; listlessness; lassitude; oppressive or soothing quietude; sleepy content.
  • noun In vegetable pathol., a condition of plants in which, from unwholesome nourishment, bad drainage, ungenial subsoil, or other bad conditions, they fall into a state of premature decrepitude.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun A state of the body or mind which is caused by exhaustion of strength and characterized by a languid feeling; feebleness; lassitude; laxity.
  • noun obsolete Any enfeebling disease.
  • noun Listless indolence; dreaminess.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun uncountable a state of the body or mind caused by exhaustion or disease and characterized by a languid feeling: lassitude
  • noun countable listless indolence; dreaminess
  • noun uncountable dullness, sluggishness; lack of vigor; stagnation
  • noun obsolete, countable An enfeebling disease; suffering

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a relaxed comfortable feeling
  • noun a feeling of lack of interest or energy
  • noun inactivity; showing an unusual lack of energy

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin, from languēre, to be languid; see languish.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the Middle English langour, langor, from the Old French langueur, from Latin languor ("faintness, languor"), from languere ("to feel faint, languish").

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Examples

  • The whole of the dramatic music of the eighteenth century must naturally have appeared cold and languid to men whose minds were profoundly moved with troubles and wars; and even at the present day the word languor best expresses that which no longer touches us in the operas of the last century, without even excepting those of Mozart himself.

    The Great Italian and French Composers Ferris, George T 1878

  • Such19 transitions often excite mirth, or other sudden or tumultuous passions; but not that sinking, that melting, that languor, which is the characteristical effect of the beautiful as it regards every sense.

    On the Sublime and Beautiful 2007

  • Original sin is accordingly called the languor of nature.

    Nature and Grace: Selections from the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas 1954

  • Such transitions2 often excite mirth, or other sudden and tumultuous passions; but not that sinking, that melting, that languor, which is the characteristical effect of the beautiful as it regards every sense.

    The Beautiful in Sounds 1909

  • Incapable of finding any satisfaction in mercenary intrigues, they succumb to an indefinable sort of languor, which is called home-sickness, though, in reality, love with them is indissolubly associated with their native village, with its steeple and vesper bells, and with the familiar scenes of home.

    Recollections of My Youth Renan, Ernest, 1823-1892 1897

  • Her eyes, as she raises them, have the hazy, dreamy languor, which is so characteristic of the mixed races.

    Dred; A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp. Vol. I 1856

  • Such [28] transitions often excite mirth, or other sudden or tumultuous passions; but not that sinking, that melting, that languor, which is the characteristical effect of the beautiful as it regards every sense.

    The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12) Edmund Burke 1763

  • But his long face had nothing of that languor which is associated with long cuffs and manicuring in the caricatures of our own country.

    The Complete Father Brown 2003

  • But his long face had nothing of that languor which is associated with long cuffs and manicuring in the caricatures of our own country.

    The Complete Father Brown 2003

  • Leaving London they went to Paris, where they passed a few days, but soon grew weary of the place; and Lord Chetwynde, feeling a kind of languor, which seemed to him like a premonition of disease, he decided to go to Germany.

    The Cryptogram A Novel James De Mille

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