different between lassitude vs listlessness

English

Etymology

Borrowed from French lassitude, from Latin lassit?d? (“faintness, weariness”), from lassus (“faint, weary”), perhaps for *ladtus, and thus akin to English late.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?læs??tju?d/

Noun

lassitude (countable and uncountable, plural lassitudes)

1. Lethargy or lack of energy; fatigue.
2. Listlessness or languor.

Quotations

• 1874, Marcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural Life, Chapter VII

  Rufus Dawes, though his eyelids would scarcely keep open, and a terrible lassitude almost paralysed his limbs, eagerly drank in the whispered sentence.

• 1919, W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, chapter 25

  "Then it's No, darling?" he said at last.

  She gave a gesture of lassitude. She was exhausted.

  "The studio is yours. Everything belongs to you. If you want to bring him here, how can I prevent you?"

• 2004, "Is Slacking the Only Way to Survive the Office?," The Scotsman (Edinburgh), 16 Aug,

  In order to appear busy, one should pace around the office clutching files.... The best part of this ancient ritual is that it tends to make one's colleagues look away—just in case you and your papers are going to interrupt their own lassitude.

• 2004, Rob Hughes, "Soccer: The Olympic Flame Running Low on Fuel," International Herald Tribune (Paris), 11 Aug.,

  At Euro 2004 and the 2002 World Cup, Blatter commented this week, many stars were physically and mentally exhausted, and left an aftertaste of nonchalance and lassitude.

Translations

Further reading

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

French

Etymology

From Latin lassit?d? (“faintness, weariness”), from lassus (“faint, weary”).

Noun

lassitude f (plural lassitudes)

1. lassitude

Further reading

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

Anagrams

• dualistes

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