LASSITUDE

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does lassitude mean? 

• LASSITUDE (noun)
  The noun LASSITUDE has 3 senses:

1. a state of comatose torpor (as found in sleeping sickness)

2. a feeling of lack of interest or energy

3. weakness characterized by a lack of vitality or energy

  Familiarity information: LASSITUDE used as a noun is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• LASSITUDE (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A state of comatose torpor (as found in sleeping sickness)

Classified under:

Nouns denoting stable states of affairs

Synonyms:

lassitude; lethargy; sluggishness

Hypernyms ("lassitude" is a kind of...):

torpidity; torpor (a state of motor and mental inactivity with a partial suspension of sensibility)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "lassitude"):

hebetude (mental lethargy or dullness)

Sense 2

Meaning:

A feeling of lack of interest or energy

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

languor; lassitude; listlessness

Hypernyms ("lassitude" is a kind of...):

apathy (an absence of emotion or enthusiasm)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Weakness characterized by a lack of vitality or energy

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

inanition; lassitude; lethargy; slackness

Hypernyms ("lassitude" is a kind of...):

weakness (the property of lacking physical or mental strength; liability to failure under pressure or stress or strain)

 Context examples 

At length lassitude succeeded to the tumult I had before endured, and I threw myself on the bed in my clothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

They could only have come from the old man at my side, and yet he sat now as absorbed as ever, very thin, very wrinkled, bent with age, an opium pipe dangling down from between his knees, as though it had dropped in sheer lassitude from his fingers.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Being no longer able, however, to receive pleasure from the surrounding objects, she soon began to walk with lassitude; the general perceived it, and with a concern for her health, which seemed to reproach her for her opinion of him, was most urgent for returning with his daughter to the house.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

She began muttering,—The flame flickers in the eye; the eye shines like dew; it looks soft and full of feeling; it smiles at my jargon: it is susceptible; impression follows impression through its clear sphere; where it ceases to smile, it is sad; an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid: that signifies melancholy resulting from loneliness.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)