TORPID

Pronunciation (US):

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IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does torpid mean? 

• TORPID (adjective)
  The adjective TORPID has 2 senses:

1. slow and apathetic

2. in a condition of biological rest or suspended animation

  Familiarity information: TORPID used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• TORPID (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Slow and apathetic

Synonyms:

inert; sluggish; soggy; torpid

Context example:

a mind grown torpid in old age

Similar:

inactive (not active physically or mentally)

Derivation:

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

torpidness (inactivity resulting from lethargy and lack of vigor or energy)

Sense 2

Meaning:

In a condition of biological rest or suspended animation

Synonyms:

dormant; hibernating; torpid

Context example:

torpid frogs

Similar:

asleep (in a state of sleep)

Domain category:

biological science; biology (the science that studies living organisms)

Derivation:

torpidity; torpidness (inactivity resulting from lethargy and lack of vigor or energy)

 Context examples 

Helpless, torpid, and vegetarian, with great limbs but a minute brain, they could be rounded up and driven by a child.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Wholly untaught, with faculties quite torpid, they seemed to me hopelessly dull; and, at first sight, all dull alike: but I soon found I was mistaken.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He said every nerve had been overstrained in some way, and the whole system must sleep torpid a while.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Such arrows were of little avail to the hunter who attacked the beast, because their action in that torpid circulation was slow, and before its powers failed it could certainly overtake and slay its assailant.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine phantoms.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)