letho-, leth-

An inability to forget past events: No matter how much Sophia tried to eliminate the memory of some bad things that happened to her before, her alethias continued to haunt her many times.

1. Physically slow and mentally dull as a result of tiredness, disease, or drugs.
2. Descriptive of physical slowness and mental dullness.
3. Characterized by laziness, indolence, or torpidity.

Pertaining to, affected with, or resembling, drowsiness: After Donald's long trip, he experienced a great deal of lethargical feelings.

Descriptive of being without energy, lazy, indolent, and torpid: As a result of the hot weather, James was lethargically feeling unable to function as well as he usually does.

To make someone have a lack of energy and to be unnaturally drowsy as a result of not getting enough sleep: When Paul was driving home at night from doing his business assignment in another city, he started to lethargize and so he parked on the side of the highway to get a nap before he continued going home.

Descriptive of a condition of inactivity that indicates an unusual lack of vigor: Because of the hot weather, Joel lost sleep and suffered with a lethargogenic condition when he went to work.

A sleeping sickness or a sleep-like condition: Raymond, in his old age, often has lethargus during the day and so he takes a nap in most of the afternoons.

1. A condition of inactivity showing an unusual lack of vigor: Mary woke up much too early in the morning with symptoms of lethargy, feeling extremely tired with a headache and sore eyes.
2. The state of a person being drowsy and dull, listless, indifferent and lazy; apathetic or sluggish inaction: Jane didn't have any time for breakfast or lunch and fell into complete lethargy and fatigue in the afternoon.
3. Pathologically, an abnormal state of disorder characterized by overpowering drowsiness or sleep: Lethargy and a total lack of energy set in when the disease Mrs. Smith had became worse.
4. A situation of excessive fatigue or retardation, with diminished physical or mental activity: A person's lethargy might be a result of an organic disease or dysfunction of the nervous system or of a mental illness; such as, depression.
5. Etymology: From Late Latin lethargia, from Greek lethargia, "forgetfulness" from lethargos, "forgetful"; originally, "inactive through forgetfulness", from lethe, "forgetfulness" + argos, "idle". © ALL rights are reserved.
© ALL rights are reserved.

Go to this Word A Day Revisited Index
so you can see more of Mickey Bach's cartoons.

A total loss of memory or a mental oblivion of what has happened in the past or complete forgetfulness: Lethe was also the name of the Greek spirit of forgetfulness and oblivion, with whom the river was often identified.

In Classical Greek, the word lethe literally means "oblivion", "forgetfulness", or "concealment".

The river of forgetfulness: The Lethe is one of the five rivers of Hades; the others were the Acheron, the Cocytus, the Phlegethon, and the Styx.

Those who drank from the River Lethe immediately forgot everything that had happened to them.

The expression "waters of Lethe" or the word lethean has been used to imply forgetfulness and complete oblivion of the mind which overcame the souls who drank from this stream in the "Lower World".

Inducing or causing forgetfulness or the oblivion of memory.

The effects of forgetting what has happened during one's present behavior.

An abnormal craving to forget what is happening to a person in his or her current existence.

A reference to not remembering what is going on in one's current life even when it just happened.

The inability to recall a word or the right word that a person is trying to remember while talking to another person or people: Petra had lethologicas, or psychological disorders, that inhibited her ability to articulate her thoughts because she was forgetting certain words, phrases, or names during her conversation with her friend on the phone.