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IDLENESS
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Having no employment
Synonyms:
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("idleness" is a kind of...):
inactivity (being inactive; being less active)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "idleness"):
dolce far niente (carefree idleness)
Derivation:
idle (not in active use)
idle (not having a job)
Sense 2
Meaning:
The trait of being idle out of a reluctance to work
Synonyms:
faineance; idleness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("idleness" is a kind of...):
indolence; laziness (inactivity resulting from a dislike of work)
Derivation:
idle (not in action or at work)
Sense 3
Meaning:
The quality of lacking substance or value
Example:
the groundlessness of their report was quickly recognized
Synonyms:
groundlessness; idleness
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("idleness" is a kind of...):
ineptitude; worthlessness (having no qualities that would render it valuable or useful)
Derivation:
idle (without a basis in reason or fact)
Context examples:
His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers I had given; then taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in: My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved, that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Now I knew that under ordinary conditions he no longer craved for this artificial stimulus, but I was well aware that the fiend was not dead but sleeping, and I have known that the sleep was a light one and the waking near when in periods of idleness I have seen the drawn look upon Holmes’s ascetic face, and the brooding of his deep-set and inscrutable eyes.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
His father was a narrow-minded trader and saw idleness and ruin in the aspirations and ambition of his son.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
In her rambling and her idleness she might only be a caricature of herself; but in her silence and sadness she was the very reverse of all that she had been before.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
As for the navy, it had fashion on its side, but I was too old when the subject was first started to enter it—and, at length, as there was no necessity for my having any profession at all, as I might be as dashing and expensive without a red coat on my back as with one, idleness was pronounced on the whole to be most advantageous and honourable, and a young man of eighteen is not in general so earnestly bent on being busy as to resist the solicitations of his friends to do nothing.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
Her eyes should be darker, but she has a sweet smile; but as for this wonderful degree of improvement, I am sure it may all be resolved into a better style of dress, and your having nobody else to look at; and therefore, if you do set about a flirtation with her, you never will persuade me that it is in compliment to her beauty, or that it proceeds from anything but your own idleness and folly.
(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)
She tried to recollect some instance of goodness, some distinguished trait of integrity or benevolence, that might rescue him from the attacks of Mr. Darcy; or at least, by the predominance of virtue, atone for those casual errors under which she would endeavour to class what Mr. Darcy had described as the idleness and vice of many years' continuance.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
I don't watch his eye in idleness, but because I am morbidly attracted to it, in a dread desire to know what he will do next, and whether it will be my turn to suffer, or somebody else's.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
I made his honour my most humble acknowledgments for the good opinion he was pleased to conceive of me, but assured him at the same time, “that my birth was of the lower sort, having been born of plain honest parents, who were just able to give me a tolerable education; that nobility, among us, was altogether a different thing from the idea he had of it; that our young noblemen are bred from their childhood in idleness and luxury; that, as soon as years will permit, they consume their vigour, and contract odious diseases among lewd females; and when their fortunes are almost ruined, they marry some woman of mean birth, disagreeable person, and unsound constitution (merely for the sake of money), whom they hate and despise. That the productions of such marriages are generally scrofulous, rickety, or deformed children; by which means the family seldom continues above three generations, unless the wife takes care to provide a healthy father, among her neighbours or domestics, in order to improve and continue the breed. That a weak diseased body, a meagre countenance, and sallow complexion, are the true marks of noble blood; and a healthy robust appearance is so disgraceful in a man of quality, that the world concludes his real father to have been a groom or a coachman. The imperfections of his mind run parallel with those of his body, being a composition of spleen, dullness, ignorance, caprice, sensuality, and pride.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Idleness had ever been irksome to me, and now that I wished to fly from reflection, and hated my former studies, I felt great relief in being the fellow-pupil with my friend, and found not only instruction but consolation in the works of the orientalists.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
