accidie
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of accidie
1200–50; Middle English < Medieval Latin accīdia (alteration of Late Latin acēdia acedia ); replacing Middle English accide < Old French
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.
And this book about “million-dollar babies” has a lot of million-dollar words: etiolated, accidie, budgerigar.
From New York Times ● Feb. 15, 2022
The doctors' diagnosis was pneumonia, but Castaneda's is accidie, a condition of numbed inertia, which he believes is the cultural disease of the West.
From Time Magazine Archive
The meridian demon was upon him; he was possessed by that bored and hopeless post-prandial melancholy which the coenobites of old knew and feared under the name of "accidie."
From Crome Yellow by Huxley, Aldous
In the Parson's Tale Chaucer says: "Envie and ire maken bitternesse in heart, which bitternesse is mother of accidie."
From Divine Comedy, Norton's Translation, Hell by Norton, Charles Eliot
During the great war the disease of accidie was prevalent in prison camps, as any account of Ruhleben shows very clearly.
From Medieval English Nunneries c. 1275 to 1535 by Power, Eileen
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.
