Idleness
['aɪdlnəs] or ['aɪdlnɪs]
Definition
(n.) The condition or quality of being idle (in the various senses of that word); uselessness; fruitlessness; triviality; inactivity; laziness.
Typist: Stephanie
Unserious Contents or Definition
n. A model farm where the devil experiments with seeds of new sins and promotes the growth of staple vices.
Checked by Dora
Examples
- Application and industry have been familiar to the one; idleness and dissipation to the other. Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
- Mostly they come for skill--or idleness. Charles Dickens. Bleak House.
- I should rush into idleness, and stagnate there with all my might. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- Having given up the interior of my head to idleness, it is as well that the exterior should work in this way. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- The greater part of it will naturally be destined for the employment of industry, and not for the maintenance of idleness. Adam Smith. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.
- How could I say to this generous being, Maintain me in idleness. Mary Shelley. The Last Man.
- A hatred of idleness, Mr. Zimmerman, is a love of industry; but how is this love and this hatred to be acquired? Harriette Wilson. The Memoirs of Harriette Wilson.
- At least, if I could--but I shall come to all that by and by, and it is mere idleness to go on about it now. Charles Dickens. Bleak House.
- Soon tiring of idleness and isolation he sent a cry from Macedonia to his old friend Milt Adams, who was in Boston, and whom he wished to rejoin if he could get work promptly in the East. Frank Lewis Dyer. Edison, His Life and Inventions.
- Whoever is not in trade is accused of eating the bread of idleness, of passing a useless existence. Charlotte Bronte. Shirley.
- That is the work of the lower orders, who live merely that the First Born may enjoy long lives of luxury and idleness. Edgar Rice Burroughs. The Gods of Mars.
- I have taught them to love work and loathe idleness. Fergus Hume. The Island of Fantasy.
- She did most heartily grieve over the idleness of her childhoodand sat down and practised vigorously an hour and a half. Jane Austen. Emma.
- It checked the idleness of one, and the business of the other. Jane Austen. Sense and Sensibility.
- He acquired a habit of idleness on the expedition, but begins, of late, to apply himself to business, and, I hope, will become an industrious man. Benjamin Franklin. Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin.
Edited by Julius