listless
Lacking energy, enthusiasm, or liveliness.
Adjective
- Lacking energy, enthusiasm, or liveliness.
- I passed whole days on the lake alone in a little boat, watching the clouds, and listening to the rippling of the waves, silent and listless. - 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter I, in...
- What an entirely different set of beings were those Stokesley children in lesson-time. . . . Poor, listless, stolid, deplorable logs, with bowed backs and crossed ankles, pipy voices and heavy eyes! - 1861, Charlotte M....
- The scene with Mrs. Wallace had broken his spirit, and he was listless now, indifferent to what happened. - 1901, William Somerset Maugham, chapter 21, in The Hero:
Synonyms: languid spiritless adiaphroistic apathetic apathistical blasé blithe deaf cool shiftless dispassionate dull enervated gallionic halfhearted heartless impassive ineffervescible insouciant indifferent insensible jaded languorous Laodicean
Origin
Etymology tree Middle English lystles English listless From Middle English lystles, equivalent to list (“desire”) + -less. Compare German lustlos and Dutch lusteloos (“lethargic, listless”). Doublet of lustless.