Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Insensibility; numbness; torpor; apathy.
  • noun In zoology, a dormant state in which no food is taken; the condition of an animal in hibernation or estivation, when it passes its time in the winter or summer sleep; dormancy.
  • noun Dullness; sluggishness; stupidity.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Same as torpidness.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The property of being torpid.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a state of motor and mental inactivity with a partial suspension of sensibility
  • noun inactivity resulting from lethargy and lack of vigor or energy

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Towards the end of the last century a certain torpidity fell upon this concept of the chemical atom.

    Johannes Stark - Nobel Lecture 1967

  • Chisleu -- meaning "torpidity," the state in which nature is in November, answering to this month.

    Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible 1871

  • And no, torpidity is not something a U-boat used to sink ships.

    Archive 2010-03-01 Steve Perry 2010

  • And no, torpidity is not something a U-boat used to sink ships.

    The Seven Deadly Sins Steve Perry 2010

  • This episode suggested that considerable losses of weight, characteristic of swallows deprived of food for a long period of time, induce torpidity and subsequent death.

    A Year on the Wing TIM DEE 2009

  • What several of these books combine to show — sometimes but not always unintentionally — is that the three years of the JFK regime were consumed by extraordinary hyperactivity on two fronts, and by extraordinary torpidity on two others.

    Feckless Youth 2006

  • His stolid instinctive conservatism grovels before the tyrant rule of routine, despite that turbulent and licentious independence which ever suggests revolt against the ruler: his mental torpidity, founded upon physical indolence, renders immediate action and all manner of exertion distasteful: his conscious weakness shows itself in overweening arrogance and intolerance.

    The Book of The Thousand Nights And A Night 2006

  • When this idea intruded on the train of romantic visions which agitated him, it was like the sharp stroke of the harpoon, which awakens the whale from slumbering torpidity into violent action.

    Anne of Geierstein 2008

  • What several of these books combine to show — sometimes but not always unintentionally — is that the three years of the JFK regime were consumed by extraordinary hyperactivity on two fronts, and by extraordinary torpidity on two others.

    Feckless Youth 2006

  • The inability or refusal to reason, to seek truth and understanding, inevitably leads to intolerance and intellectual torpidity.

    The Absence of Reason 2007

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