Word of the Day Archive
Wednesday May 24, 2006
torpid \TOR-pid\ , adjective:
1. Having lost motion or the power of exertion and feeling; numb; benumbed.
2. Dormant; hibernating or estivating.
3. Dull; sluggish; apathetic.
Canary Islanders are citizens of Spain, but geography asserts itself from time to time, as a reminder that this land will always be Africa's: the trade winds get interrupted by strong gusts from the east that bring hot dust and sometimes even torpid, wind-buffeted locusts.
-- Barbara Kingsolver, "Where the Map Stopped", New York Times, May 17, 1992
For more than twenty years--all my adult life--I have lived here: my great weight sunk, torpid in the heat, into this sagged chair on my rooftop patio.
-- Peggy Payne, Sister India
Some animals became torpid in winter, others were torpid in summer.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life
The debacle over signatures has roused the normally politically torpid Mayor, who dislikes pressing the flesh.
-- Jan Cienski, "Petition bungle robs Mayor of spot on ballot", National Post, July 30, 2002
It is a man's own fault . . . if his mind grows torpid in old age.
-- Samuel Johnson, quoted in James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, Life of Samuel Johnson
Torpid comes from Latin torpidus, "numb, sluggish," from torpere, "to be sluggish, inert, or numb."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for torpid
