Dictionary

listlessly en · ADV

Etymology

Etymology tree Middle English lystles English listless Proto-Indo-European *leyg-der. Proto-Germanic *līkąder. Proto-Germanic *-līkaz Proto-Germanic *-ê Proto-Germanic *-līkê Proto-West Germanic *-līkē Old English -līċe Middle English -ly English -ly English listlessly From listless + -ly.

Meanings

1. In a listless manner; without energy or enthusiasm.
   • He thrust his head into the aisle. "Boy!" A Chinese in a white coat responded listlessly. "What will you have? Beer?" 1959, Anthony Burgess, Beds in the East (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 521:
   • The lamb bunted several irresponsive objects - never its dam's udder - baaing listlessly. 1902, Barbara Baynton, edited by Sally Krimmer and Alan Lawson, Bush Studies (Portable Australian Authors: Barbara Baynton), St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, published 1980, page 44:
   • Since first tossing its cartoonish, good-time cock-rock to the masses in the early ’00s, The Darkness has always fallen back on this defense: The band is a joke, but hey, it’s a good joke. With Hot Cakes—the group’s third album, and first since reforming last year—the laughter has died. In its place is the sad wheeze of the last surviving party balloon slowly, listlessly deflating. 2012 August 21, Jason Heller, “The Darkness: Hot Cakes (Music Review)”, in The Onion AV Club:
   • And as a child stares at the bare walls of a narrow hut, so the gods looked all listlessly upon the worlds, saying: “Will no new thing be?” 1906, Lord Dunsany [i.e., Edward Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany], Time and the Gods, London: William Heineman, →OCLC, page 31:

Forms