- Today's Word
Lassitude
LASS-ih-tood
Definition
(noun) A state of physical or mental weariness; lack of energy.
Example
After weeks of stress, he sank into a kind of emotional lassitude.
Fun Fact
Lassitude is often used in literary writing to evoke more than just fatigue—it suggests a kind of defeated sluggishness that feels heavy and existential. It shares roots with “latitude” (from Latin latus, meaning wide), as if your energy is stretched too thin. Think more post-burnout melancholy than “just need a nap.”
(adjective) Devoid of intelligence, substance, or meaningful content; empty in a way that is made worse by the appearance of fullness.
The panel discussion was so vacuous — four articulate people saying nothing of substance for ninety minutes — that the audience left feeling vaguely cheated by their own attention.
Vacuous derives from the Latin vacuus, meaning “empty” or “void,” rooted in vacare — “to be empty” or “to be free.” The same root gives us vacuum, vacant, vacation — all words built around the idea of emptiness or absence. It entered English in the 17th century, initially used in scientific contexts to describe a literal vacuum before acquiring its cutting figurative sense of a mind or expression that contains nothing worth engaging with.