torpid

So in continued fevers, when the stomach is totally torpid, which is known by the total aversion to solid food, the cutaneous capillaries are by reverse sympathy in a perpetual state of increased activity, as appears from the heat of the skin.

Zoonomia, Vol. II Or, the Laws of Organic Life Erasmus Darwin 1766

One evening, I sat upon our front step, in a kind of torpid state of mind through my refusal to contemplate the dismal future.

Philip Winwood A Sketch of the Domestic History of an American Captain in the War of Independence; Embracing Events that Occurred between and during the Years 1763 and 1786, in New York and London: written by His Enemy in War, Herbert Russell, Lieutenant in the Loyalist Forces. Robert Neilson Stephens 1886

But he did not shed even a single tear, only his face looked more severe than usual, but there was depicted in it a kind of torpid calm.

The Knights of the Cross or, Krzyzacy Henryk Sienkiewicz 1881

Sometimes I have a kind of torpid languid feeling, which is scarcely unpleasant, only strange, you know.

Charlotte's Inheritance 1875

Day after day she lay in bed, in a darkened room, unwilling to lift her voice above a whisper, waiting in a kind of torpid dread for the intelligence that she knew must soon come.

Cobwebs and Cables Hesba Stretton 1871

They probably breed there under stones in summer, and creeping in among the stones pass the winter there, at certain seasons doubtless in a kind of torpid state.

The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II Alexander Leslie 1866

All was cold and rainy and dark, and we waited in a kind of torpid misery for daylight.

Views a-foot Bayard Taylor 1851

In the winter he dozed away his time, within his father's house, by the fireside, in a kind of torpid state, seldom departing from the chimney-corner; but in the summer he was all alert, and in quest of his game in the fields, and on sunny banks.

The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 Gilbert White 1756

A few guests were coming over for dinner — something which I neither dreaded nor welcomed and which in itself (that is, my torpid indifference) reveals a fascinating aspect of depression’s pathology.

Darkness Visible Styron, William 1989

David hears him go:A vague, remote pity stirred within his breast like a wreathing, raveling smoke, tenuously dispersed within his being, a kind of torpid heart-break he had felt sometimes in winter awakened deep in the night and hearing that dull tread descend the stairs as Albert went to work. (p.440)Instead of the familiar progress from halakhah (Jewish law) to haskalah (secular enlightenment), David makes use of religious props to smack up against the reality of modern urban life in “this Golden Land,” the New World.

Call It Sleep 2009