Sloth vs Lethargy - What's the difference?
sloth | lethargy |
(uncountable) Laziness; slowness in the mindset; disinclination to action or labour.
* Milton
* Franklin
(countable) A herbivorous, arboreal South American mammal of the families Megalonychidae and Bradypodidae, noted for its slowness and inactivity.
(rare) A collective term for a group of bears.
(pathology) A condition characterized by extreme fatigue or drowsiness, or prolonged sleep patterns.
* c. 1599 , (William Shakespeare), King Henry IV, Part 2 :
* 2003 , Amanda Ripley, "At Last, the Pill for Men", Time , 20 Oct 2003:
A state of extreme torpor or apathy, especially with lack of emotion or interest; loosely, sluggishness, laziness.
* Atterbury
* 1995 , Bruce W Nelan, "Crime and Punishment", Time , 20 Mar 1995:
* 2008 , Nick Fletcher, The Guardian , 9 May 2008:
As nouns the difference between sloth and lethargy
is that sloth is (uncountable) laziness; slowness in the mindset; disinclination to action or labour while lethargy is (pathology) a condition characterized by extreme fatigue or drowsiness, or prolonged sleep patterns.As a verb sloth
is (obsolete|intransitive) to be idle.sloth
English
(wikipedia sloth)Alternative forms
* sloath, slowth (obsolete)Noun
- [They] change their course to pleasure, ease, and sloth .
- Sloth , like rust, consumes faster than labour wears.
Usage notes
Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins.Derived terms
* forsloth * Australian sloth * native sloth * sloth animalcule * sloth bear * slothful * sloth monkeyHyponyms
* (animal) two-toed slothExternal links
* *Anagrams
* English calqueslethargy
English
Noun
- This Apoplexie is (as I take it) a kind of Lethargie , a sleeping of the blood, a horson Tingling.
- So in order to avoid unpleasant side effects like lethargy and sexual dysfunction, most recent trials also gave men testosterone supplements.
- Europe lay then under a deep lethargy .
- Yakovlev, one of the architects of the reforms put in place by Mikhail Gorbachev, says he too is "amazed" at the government's lethargy .
- The increase in mining stocks helped the FTSE 100 shake off some earlier lethargy and close 9.8 points higher at 6270.8, despite the disappointment of unchanged UK interest rates.