Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Exhaustion, as from lack of nourishment or vitality.
- noun The condition or quality of being empty.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The condition or consequence of being inane or empty; hence, exhaustion from lack of nourishment, either physical or mental; starvation due to deficiency or mal-assimilation of food.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun The condition of being inane; emptiness; lack of fullness, as in the vessels of the body; hence, specifically, exhaustion from lack of food, either from partial or complete starvation, or from a disorder of the digestive apparatus, producing the same result.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun
Emptiness . - noun medicine A state of advanced lack of adequate nutrition, food or water, or a physiological inability to utilize them;
starvation . - noun philosophy A spiritual emptiness or lack of purpose or will to live, akin to the
Existentialist Philosophy state of "nausea".
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun weakness characterized by a lack of vitality or energy
- noun exhaustion resulting from lack of food
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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"inanition" (starvation) for a short period, but that, accordingly, the qualitative side of the nourishment becomes more important the longer the fever lasts.
Valere Aude Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration Louis Dechmann
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Having something to do, in my case something purely cerebral and verbal, is a salutary diversion -- if only in the almost literal sense of providing an occasion to communicate with the outside world and express in words, often angry words, the bottled-up irritations and frustrations of physical inanition.
Anatomy Of Isolation: ALS Sufferer Tony Judt's Experience Of Night 2010
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They said they had lots of pretty good stuff, like the Diary of Anne Funk, she was a lesser-known "prisoner of conscience" from Burbank, CA, that died of inanition while hiding in the bottom drawer of a dresser until the tax assessor went away and a Golden Girls boxed set in VHS format, so I'd have to be more specific.
Overcome the first marketing hurdle Janet Ursel 2009
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England is full of wealth, of multifarious produce, supply for human want in every kind; yet England is dying of inanition.
Modernism and social life Daniel Little 2009
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England is full of wealth, of multifarious produce, supply for human want in every kind; yet England is dying of inanition.
Archive 2009-01-01 Daniel Little 2009
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Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, a novelist, argued that women were less likely to be harmed by education than by the change from intellectual activity to intellectual inanition….
The Five of Hearts Patricia O'Toole 2008
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In particular, he says, beware Earth shoes and “sensible” shoes; the former hints at Carteresque inanition, while the latter signals that all-out war is near at hand.
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Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, a novelist, argued that women were less likely to be harmed by education than by the change from intellectual activity to intellectual inanition….
The Five of Hearts Patricia O'Toole 2008
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Weak from inanition, confused from want of sleep, harassed with fatigue, and exhausted by perturbation, she felt now so ill, that she solemnly believed her fatal wish quick approaching.
Camilla 2008
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Admit, compassionate man, that it is necessary to suffer the most cruel need, and that it is very painful, for the sake of obtaining a little relief, to get oneself attested by the authorities as though one were not free to suffer and to die of inanition while waiting to have our misery relieved.
Les Miserables 2008
yarb commented on the word inanition
Presley climbed to the summit of one of the hills--the highest--that rose out of the canyon, from the crest of which he could see for thirty, fifty, sixty miles down the valley, and, filling his pipe, smoked lazily for upwards of an hour, his head empty of thought, allowing himself to succumb to a pleasant, gentle inanition, a little drowsy, comfortable in his place, prone upon the ground, warmed just enough by such sunlight as filtered through the live-oaks, soothed by the good tobacco and the prolonged murmur of the spring and creek.
- Frank Norris, The Octopus, ch. 1
August 9, 2008
wolfnotes commented on the word inanition
November 3, 2008