Sunday Word: Hebetude

[sallymn]

hebetude [heb-i-tood, -tyood]

noun:
listlessness, lethargy, or laziness of the mind

Examples:

Though the pandemic-induced hebetude still prevails in day-to-day affairs, the high-octane election campaign and heated political arguments have oozed a degree of anxiety and buzz into the mundane lives of the lesser mortals (Shan A S, LDF sitting pretty; UDF, NDA hope to upset its applecart in Vamanapuram, The New Indian Express, March 2021)

From that solitude, full of despair and terror, he was torn out brutally, with kicks and blows, passive, sunk in hebetude. (Joseph Conrad, Nostromo)

So you think you are saving yourselves from madness, but you are falling into mediocrity, into hebetude. (Italo Calvino, Difficult Loves)

This hebetude of all faculty was the merciful, protecting method that Nature took with her, dimming the lamp of consciousness until the wounded creature could gain sufficient resiliency to bear a full realization of life. (Robert Herrick, Clark's Field)

Benumbed, exhausted, sunk in hebetude, she waited until she could wait no more, until intolerable suspense drove her blindly. (John Russell, Where the Pavement Ends)

Origin:
1620s, from Latin hebetudo, noun of quality from hebes 'blunt, dull', figuratively 'sluggish; stupid', a word of unknown origin. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Hebetude usually suggests mental dullness, often marked by laziness or torpor. As such, it was a good word for one Queenslander correspondent, who wrote in a letter to the editor of the Weekend Australian of 'an epidemic of hebetude among young people who … are placing too great a reliance on electronic devices to do their thinking and remembering.' Hebetude comes from Late Latin hebetudo, which means pretty much the same thing as our word. It is also closely related to the Latin word for 'dull,' hebes, which has extended meanings such as 'obtuse,' 'doltish,' and 'stupid.' (Merriam-Webster)