☼ Concept Map

''languor'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

↩ 🔳 🔳 🔳

Primary

⁀➴

''languor'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260320113731-00-⌔

languor - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

languor (countable and uncountable, plural languors)

  • (uncountable) A state of the body or mind caused by exhaustion or disease and characterized by a languid or weary feeling; lassitude; (countable) an instance of this.
    • ✤ Synonym: torpor
    • ✤ * languor of convalescence*
    • ✤ Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and hardly, that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly sank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness.1
    • ✤ As the opinion announcements have stretched past the half-hour mark, some in the public gallery exhibit a bit of languor, but they perk up when [U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena] Kagan begins discussing western gray squirrels.2
  • (uncountable) Melancholy caused by lovesickness, sadness, etc.; (countable) an instance of this.
  • (uncountable) Dullness, sluggishness; lack of vigour; stagnation.
    • ✤ I rushed towards her, and embraced her with ardour; but the deathly languor and coldness of the limbs told me, that what I now held in my arms had ceased to be the Elizabeth whom I had loved and cherished.3
    • ✤ From languor she passed to the lightest vivacity; her temper became merry and wild in the extreme; she was all at once a tease, a tomboy, and a witch.4
  • (uncountable) Listless indolence or inactivity, especially if enjoyable or relaxing; dreaminess; (countable) an instance of this.
    • ✤ It is earth’s brief breathing space, after the heat and hurry of her busier time; like that repose known only to the young and happy, when the nerves gradually compose themselves, the thoughts gather into some vague but delicious train, and the eyes are closed by languor before sleep.5
    • ✤ The languor of Youth—how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth—all save this—come and go with us through life; […] but languor —the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse—that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.6
    • ✤ Repose! The very word has a nostalgic ring to it, conjuring up a vanished world of pale solitude, gentle distances, summer vistas, languour, and lovely women …7
  • (uncountable) Heavy humidity and stillness of the air.
    • ✤ There is a languor in the air which encourages your own, and the poetry of memory is in every drooping flower and falling leaf.8
    • ✤ [A] certain languor in the air hinted at an early summer.9
    • ✤ The evening was mild, with a certain languor in the air.10
  • (uncountable, obsolete) Sorrow; suffering; also, enfeebling disease or illness; (countable, obsolete) an instance of this.

Verb

languor (third-person singular simple present languors, present participle languoring, simple past and past participle languored)

  • (intransitive) To languish.

Pronunciation

  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈlæŋɡə/
  • (General American, without æ-raising) IPA: /ˈlæŋɡɚ/
    • Audio: 🔊
      • (æ-raising) IPA: /ˈleɪ̯ŋɡɚ/, /ˈlɛ̃ŋɡɚ/
  • Rhymes: -æŋɡə(ɹ)
  • Hyphenation: lan‧guor

Etymology 1

The noun is derived from Middle English langore, langour (“disease, illness; misery, sadness; suffering; condition or event causing sadness, suffering, etc.; unwholesomeness; idleness, inertia; depression, self-disgust; expression of grief”) [and other forms],11 from Middle French languer, langueur, langour, and Anglo-Norman langor, langour, langur, Old French langueur, languour (“disease, illness; suffering; emotional fatigue, sadness; listlessness; stagnation”) (modern French langueur (“languor”)), and from their etymon Latin languor (“faintness, feebleness; languor; apathy”), from languēre,12 the present active infinitive of langueō (“to feel faint or weak; (figurative) to be idle, inactive; to be listless”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European ﹡(s)leg-, ﹡(s)leh₁g-. The English word is cognate with Catalan llangor, Italian languore (“faintness, weakness; languor”), langore (obsolete), Old Occitan langor (modern Occitan langor), Portuguese langor, languor (obsolete), Spanish langor.12

Etymology 2

The verb is derived from Middle English langouren (“to be ill; to languish, suffer; to cause to suffer”) [and other forms],13 from Anglo-Norman langurer and Middle French langorer, langorir, langourer (“to languish; to be languorous”), from Old French languerer, from langueur (“disease, illness; suffering; emotional fatigue, sadness; listlessness; stagnation”); see further at etymology 1 above. Later uses of the verb have been influenced by the noun.14

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

  1. 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter IV, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume I, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC, pages 101–102: ↩

  2. 2024 June 28, Mark Walsh, “Consider the wild gray squirrel, Kagan rebukes her colleagues as court overrules Chevron”, in SCOTUSblog: ↩

  3. 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter VI, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. […], volume III, London: […] [Macdonald and Son] for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC, page 120: ↩

  4. 1923, Elinor Wylie, “The Serpent in Persepolis”, in Jennifer Lorn: A Sedate Extravaganza. […], New York, N.Y.: George H[enry] Doran Company, →OCLC, book 3 (The Prince), page 266: ↩

  5. 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Francesca Carrara. […], volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, pages 1–2: ↩

  6. 1945, Evelyn Waugh, chapter 4, in Brideshead Revisited […], London: Chapman & Hall, published 1952, →OCLC, book 1 (Et in Arcadia Ego), pages 70–71: ↩

  7. 1984, Marco Vassi, Lying Down: A Horizontal Worldview, Santa Barbara, Calif.: Capra Press, →ISBN, page 65: ↩

  8. 1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume I, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, pages 113–114: ↩

  9. 1957, James Purdy, The New Yorker, volume 33, New York, N.Y.: New Yorker Magazine Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, page clxvi: ↩

  10. 2018, Georges Simenon, translated by William Hobson, Maigret and the Reluctant Witnesses ‎, London: Penguin Books, →ISBN: ↩

  11. “langǒur, n.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007. ↩

  12. “languor, n.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2008; “languor, n.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022. ↩ ↩2

  13. “langǒuren, v.”, in MED Online, Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan, 2007. ↩

  14. “languor, v.”, in OED Online ⁠, Oxford: Oxford University Press, June 2008. ↩

Link to original

Secondary

• • •