different between indolence vs listlessness

English

Etymology

From Middle French indolence, from Latin indolentia.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??nd?l?ns/

Noun

indolence (usually uncountable, plural indolences)

1. Habitual laziness or sloth.
   • 1912, Stewart Edward White, chapter 19, in The Sign at Six:

     [H]er whole figure expressed a tense vibrant life in singular contrast to the apparent indolence of the men at whom she was talking.

   • 2001 September 10, Garrison Keillor, “In praise of laziness”, in Time^[1]:

     [N]ow, after five weeks of doing nothing, I am an authority on the subject of indolence and glad to share my views with you.

Synonyms

• indolency

Related terms

Translations

French

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin indolentia.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /??.d?.l??s/

Noun

indolence f (uncountable)

1. (obsolete) insensibility, lack of pain
2. laziness, indolence

Further reading

• “indolence” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

English

Etymology

From listless +? -ness.

Noun

listlessness (countable and uncountable, plural listlessnesses)

1. The state of being listless; apathetic indifference; lethargy.
   • 1749, John Cleland, Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, Letter the First,^[1]

     But every thing must have an end. A motion made by this angelic youth, in the listlessness of going off sleep, replac'd his shirt and the bed-cloaths in a posture that shut up that treasure from longer view.

   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, Chapter 35,^[2]

     […] lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it.

Translations