listless

Etymology

It is formed from Middle English liste (“desire, pleasure, joy”) + -les,^{[2][3][4][5][6]} though the American Heritage Dictionary and the Middle English Dictionary call the first part only probable, the latter also comparing the Middle English noun list.^[4][7] The Middle English noun is probably from lysten (“to please, desire”),^[8] from Old English lystan,^[8][9] itself from lust (“desire, pleasure”),^[9] so that the word shares its source with lust,^[10][11] which Etymonline takes back to Proto-Germanic *lustuz.^[2] The OED compares the doublet lustles, recorded in the sense "listless" from 1398, translating Latin deses.^[6] Skeat equates the two,^[11] and Barnhart compares German lustlos, the same formation in German from cognate elements.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

Slothful, idle: about 1440, in the Promptorium Parvulorum, where lystles glosses desidiosus and segnis.^[7][3][6] Etymonline dates it to the mid-15th century,^[2] and Dictionary.com to 1400–50.^[12]

Semantic evolution

The base meant “desire” or “pleasure”, and the OED records from about 1440 an obsolete use for lacking relish or inclination for some particular pursuit, followed by of,^[6][13] which Johnson (1755) still illustrates from Dryden's "listless of their gain", under the gloss "careless; heedless".^[14] Beside it stood the general sense, unwilling to move, act or make any effort, marked by languid indifference,^[6][13] already close to the Promptorium gloss.^[7] Johnson's first sense was "without inclination; without any determination to one thing more than another", with Gulliver's "I was listless and desponding" among the quotations.^[14] The simple word list, “desire”, is now archaic,^[10] and current dictionaries define the adjective by a lack of energy or of any inclination to effort.^[15][5] Spenser tried an opposite, listful, in the 1590s, without success.^[2] The noun listlessness is recorded from the mid-17th century and the adverb listlessly from the late 17th.^[13]

Timeline

• c. 1440 – lystles, slothful, idle; without relish or inclination.^[6][7][3]
• mid 17th century – the noun listlessness.^[13]
• late 17th century – the adverb listlessly.^[13]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Lacking energy, interest or the will to make any effort; languid: After the fever she felt listless for a week.^{[15][5][13][6]}
2. (obsolete) Without relish or inclination for some particular thing, followed by of.^[6][13][14]

Word family

• listlessly
• listlessness

Related words

• lust
• lustless

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
5. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ 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)
8. ^ a b Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
11. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
12. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
13. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b c Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
15. ^ a b Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins