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.
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