lassitude

Etymology

It is borrowed from Middle French lassitude,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} from Latin lassitūdō (“faintness, weariness”),^{[2][3][4][5][7]} from lassus (“faint, tired, weary”).^[2][7][4][8] Etymonline, the Middle English Dictionary and Dictionary.com take it directly from the Latin.^[7][9][10] The Latin adjective stands for *lad-to-s,^[4] a suffixed form of Proto-Indo-European *led- (“slow, weary”),^[7] from the root *lē- (“to let go, slacken”),^[7][8] and so it is related to Old English læt (“sluggish, slow”), the source of late,^[7][4] and, in Barnhart and Merriam-Webster Unabridged, to let.^[2][5]

Earliest recorded meaning

Weakness or weariness: about 1425, in a translation of Guy de Chauliac's Grande Chirurgie, "werynez or lassitude", glossing the Latin.^[9][2] The OED, in an entry not fully revised, has its first record only in 1541, in Elyot's Castel of Helthe,^[3] and Hoad, Collins and Dictionary.com also date the word to the 16th century.^[11][12][10]

Semantic evolution

The word entered English through medical writing, for a bodily state, as in Chauliac and Elyot.^[9][3] Bacon's use, quoted by Johnson (1755), is still medical: lassitude is remedied by bathing or anointing with oil and warm water, and Johnson glosses it "weariness; fatigue".^[13] The OED and the Shorter Oxford define it for mind as well as body, and include the flagging of mental powers and an unwillingness to exert oneself,^[3][6] and Merriam-Webster Unabridged gives listlessness or indifference as a sense of its own.^[5]

Timeline

• c. 1425 – weakness, weariness, in a surgical text.^[9][2] Etymonline dates the word to the early 15th century,^[7] and the OED's first record is from 1541.^[3]

Meanings

Noun

1. Physical or mental weariness; fatigue: A deep lassitude settled on the crew after the long watch.^[12][5][3]
2. Listlessness or indifference; lack of the will to exert oneself.^[5][6]

Related words

• late
• let
• alas

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
3. ^ a b c d e f g Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
5. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c d Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
10. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
11. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.