Word of the Day Archive
Wednesday June 21, 2006
languor \LANG-guhr; LANG-uhr\
, noun:
1. Mental or physical weariness or fatigue.
2. Listless indolence, especially the indolence of one who is satiated by a life of luxury or pleasure.
3. A heaviness or oppressive stillness of the air.
Without health life is not life, wrote Rabelais, "life is not livable. . . . Without health life is nothing but languor."
-- Joseph Epstein, Narcissus Leaves the Pool
Charles's court exuded a congenial hedonism. It was exuberant and intemperate, given to both languor and excess.
-- John Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination
Outside the window, New Orleans . . . brooded in a faintly tarnished languor, like an aging yet still beautiful courtesan in a smokefilled room, avid yet weary too of ardent ways.
-- Thomas S. Hines, William Faulkner and the Tangible Past
Sleep and dreams would swallow up the languor of daytime.
-- Patrick Chamoiseau, School Days (translated by Linda Coverdale)
Languor is from Latin languor, from languere, "to be faint or weak." The adjective form is languorous.
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for languor
