languish
Americanverb (used without object)
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languishes,
present (3rd person singular)
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languished,
past participle, past
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languishing
present participle
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to be or become weak or feeble; droop; fade.
Whether the plant thrives or languishes and dies is heavily dependent on the climate.
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to lose vigor and vitality.
Though she was once full of energy, her illness had caused her to languish.
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to undergo neglect or experience prolonged inactivity; suffer hardship and distress.
to languish in prison for ten years.
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to be subjected to delay or disregard; be ignored.
a petition that languished on the warden's desk for a year.
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to pine with desire or longing.
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to assume an expression of tender, sentimental melancholy.
noun
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Archaic. the act or state of being neglected, losing vigor, or becoming weak.
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Archaic. a tender, melancholy look or expression.
verb
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to lose or diminish in strength or energy
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(often foll by for) to be listless with desire; pine
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to suffer deprivation, hardship, or neglect
to languish in prison
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to put on a tender, nostalgic, or melancholic expression
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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languishsimple
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languishessimple
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have languishedperfect
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has languishedperfect
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am languishingprogressive
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are languishingprogressive
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is languishingprogressive
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have been languishingperfect progressive
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has been languishingperfect progressive
Past
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languishedsimple
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had languishedperfect
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was languishingprogressive
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were languishingprogressive
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had been languishingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of languish
First recorded in 1250–1300; Middle English, from Middle French languiss-, long stem of languir, from Latin languēre “to languish”; akin to laxus lax; see -ish 2
Explanation
To languish is to become pitiful or weak because you're sick, in love, or stuck somewhere. A prisoner might languish in jail, longing for her freedom. Languish, like languid, is from the Latin word languere which means "to be weak or faint." Your houseplants might languish in a dark dry corner. A Romantic poet might languish on a velvet couch with the back of her hand to her forehead. People in operas love to languish: The main character in La Traviata, Violetta, languishes from longing and eventually tuberculosis.
Vocabulary lists containing languish
"Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King, Jr. (1963)
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Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" Speech (1963)
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Refugee
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The division is under pressure to show quick results, but it has struggled to recruit prosecutors and has been slowed by an internal turf war that has caused some promising investigations to languish.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
Places like Wigan - in Greater Manchester, Burnham's stronghold - often languish next to the bigger cities in whose shadow they sit.
From BBC ● Jul. 20, 2026
Nathan Hochman had let the case languish for nearly his entire first year in office.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 5, 2026
Witnessing a person languish is as frustrating as it is heartbreaking—especially when the reasons for their emotional and professional stagnation are completely valid.
From MarketWatch ● Apr. 25, 2026
He was simply too vital to the organization to allow him to languish in jail.
From "Long Walk to Freedom" by Nelson Mandela
Official readouts and state media reports have not said whether Xi and Kim discussed North Korea's nuclear weapons development, for which Pyongyang languishes under international sanctions.
From Barron's ● Jun. 9, 2026
Tortora, meanwhile, languishes in squalid jail cells and a country with only a casual regard for habeas corpus.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 19, 2026
Jenner is likely taking a significant financial hit on the property as it languishes on the market.
From MarketWatch ● Feb. 17, 2026
Discovery has attracted interest from activist shareholders as the company’s stock languishes.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 11, 2025
After this, the action languishes, Abraham dies, and the Pastorale comes to an end.
From Basque Legends With an Essay on the Basque Language by Wentworth Webster
In return, he left us a sublime body of work, one that languished in astonishing critical neglect until the mid-19th and early-20th centuries, the result of a dwindling taste for monastic and devotional art.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 24, 2026
The ETF then languished in correction territory — it never rose more than 10% off that Nov. 20 low — until it made a new low in early February.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 10, 2026
Former state controller Betty Yee — who languished at the bottom of the polls — held on for a few more weeks before calling it quits.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 3, 2026
"UMG's stock price has languished due to a combination of issues that are unrelated to the performance of its music business," Ackman said in a statement when the bid was announced.
From Barron's ● May 29, 2026
A frozen banana tree, brow'n and stricken, languished against the front of the porch, the tree preparing to collapse as the iron fence had done long ago.
From "A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole
A “negative output gap, a languishing labor market, soft real income growth and unambiguously restrictive monetary policy should alleviate concerns around sticky underlying inflation in the U.K.,” von Ahlen argues.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 6, 2026
Kent debuted on the Baseball Writers’ Assn. of America Hall of Fame ballot five years later, languishing there for 10 consecutive seasons without coming close to the 75% threshold necessary to be elected.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 25, 2026
After languishing in development hell under Stanley Kubrick for two decades, the notoriously intense auteur deferred the project to Spielberg, believing he would be the right fit to tell such a complex yet tender story.
From Salon ● Jun. 28, 2026
Swatch, which has struggled with sluggish sales and a languishing share price, has decided to lean in to the controversy.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 18, 2026
In 1962, CIA officials learned that the Soviets might be willing to exchange Powers for a senior KGB agent, Colonel Rudolf Abel, who was then languishing in a US federal prison in Georgia.
From "Spies: The Secret Showdown Between America and Russia" by Marc Favreau
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
