indolence

from WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006)
indolence
    n 1: inactivity resulting from a dislike of work [syn:
         {indolence}, {laziness}]
    
from The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Indolence \In"do*lence\, n. [L. indolentia freedom from pain:
   cf. F. indolence.]
   [1913 Webster]
   1. Freedom from that which pains, or harasses, as toil, care,
      grief, etc. [Obs.]
      [1913 Webster]

            I have ease, if it may not rather be called
            indolence.                            --Bp. Hough.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. The quality or condition of being indolent; inaction, or
      lack of exertion of body or mind, proceeding from love of
      ease or aversion to toil; habitual idleness; indisposition
      to labor; laziness; sloth; inactivity.
      [1913 Webster]

            Life spent in indolence, and therefore sad.
                                                  --Cowper.
      [1913 Webster]

            As there is a great truth wrapped up in "diligence,"
            what a lie, on the other hand, lurks at the root of
            our present use of the word "indolence"! This is
            from "in" and "doleo," not to grieve; and indolence
            is thus a state in which we have no grief or pain;
            so that the word, as we now employ it, seems to
            affirm that indulgence in sloth and ease is that
            which would constitute for us the absence of all
            pain.                                 --Trench.
      [1913 Webster]
    
from Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
101 Moby Thesaurus words for "indolence":
      a wise passiveness, abeyance, apathy, catalepsy, catatonia,
      cautiousness, circumspection, contemplation, contemplative life,
      creeping, deadliness, deathliness, deliberateness, deliberation,
      dilatoriness, do-nothing policy, do-nothingism, do-nothingness,
      dolce far niente, dormancy, drawl, entropy, ergophobia, faineancy,
      faineantise, foot-dragging, hoboism, idleness, immobility,
      inaction, inactivity, indifference, inertia, inertness, inexertion,
      just being, laggardness, laissez-aller, laissez-faire,
      laissez-faireism, languidness, languor, lassitude, latency, laze,
      laziness, leisureliness, lentitude, lentor, lethargy, listlessness,
      lotus-eating, meditation, mere existence, mere tropism, neutralism,
      neutrality, neutralness, noninvolvement, nonparticipation,
      nonresistance, nonviolence, nonviolent resistance, oscitancy,
      pacifism, paralysis, passive resistance, passive self-annihilation,
      passiveness, passivism, passivity, pokiness, policy,
      procrastination, quiescence, quietism, reluctance, remissness,
      shiftlessness, slackness, sloth, slothfulness, slouch, slowness,
      sluggardy, sluggishness, spring fever, stagnancy, stagnation,
      standpattism, stasis, suspense, tentativeness, torpidity, torpor,
      vagrancy, vegetation, vis inertiae, vita contemplativa,
      waiting game, watching and waiting

    

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