different between inertia vs listlessness

English

Etymology

From Latin inertia (“lack of art or skill, inactivity, indolence”), from iners (“unskilled, inactive”), from in- (“without, not”) + ars (“skill, art”).

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /?n??.??/, /??n?.??/
• Rhymes: -??(?)??

Noun

inertia (countable and uncountable, plural inertias or inertiae or inertiæ)

1. (physics, uncountable or countable) The property of a body that resists any change to its uniform motion; equivalent to its mass.
2. (figuratively) In a person, unwillingness to take action.

   • Men […] have immense irresolution and inertia.

   • 2014, Jacob Steinberg, "Wigan shock Manchester City in FA Cup again to reach semi-finals", The Guardian, 9 March 2014:

     City had been woeful, their anger at their own inertia summed up when Samir Nasri received a booking for dissent, and they did not have a shot on target until the 66th minute.

3. (medicine) Lack of activity; sluggishness; said especially of the uterus, when, in labour, its contractions have nearly or wholly ceased.

Synonyms

• (unwillingness to take action): idleness, laziness, sloth, slothfulness

Derived terms

• inertial
• inertia welding
• moment of inertia

Related terms

• inert
• inertness

Translations

Further reading

• inertia in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.
• inertia in The Century Dictionary, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1911.
• inertia at OneLook Dictionary Search

Anagrams

• iranite

Finnish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?inerti?/, [?ine?r?t?i?]
• Rhymes: -i?
• Syllabification: i?ner?ti?a

Noun

inertia

1. inertia

   Synonyms: hitaus, vitka, jatkavuus

Declension

Latin

Etymology

From Proto-Italic *enartj?. Related to iners (“without skill; inactive”), from in- (“not”) + ars (“art, skill”).

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /i?ner.ti.a/, [??n?rt?iä]
• (Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /i?ner.t?si.a/, [i?n?rt??s?i?]

Noun

inertia f (genitive inertiae); first declension

1. want of art or skill, unskillfulness, ignorance
2. (by extension) inactivity, idleness, laziness, indolence

Declension

First-declension noun.

Related terms

• iners
• inersit?d?
• inerticulus

Descendants

References

• inertia in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
• inertia in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
• inertia in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition, 1883–1887)
• inertia in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré Latin-Français, Hachette

Norwegian Bokmål

Noun

inertia m (definite singular inertiaen, indefinite plural inertiaer, definite plural inertiaene)

1. form removed with the spelling reform of 2005; superseded by inerti

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