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Weary vs Lethargy - What's the difference?

weary | lethargy |

As an adjective weary

is having the strength exhausted by toil or exertion; tired; fatigued.

As a verb weary

is to make or to become weary.

As a noun lethargy is

a condition characterized by extreme fatigue or drowsiness, or prolonged sleep patterns.

weary

English

Adjective

(er)
  • Having the strength exhausted by toil or exertion; tired; fatigued.
  • :
  • *1623 , (William Shakespeare), (As You Like It) , :
  • *:I care not for my spirits if my legs were not weary .
  • *(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) (1807-1882)
  • *:[I] am weary , thinking of your task.
  • *
  • *:There was a neat hat-and-umbrella stand, and the stranger's weary feet fell soft on a good, serviceable dark-red drugget, which matched in colour the flock-paper on the walls.
  • Having one's patience, relish, or contentment exhausted; tired; sick.
  • :
  • Expressive of fatigue.
  • :
  • Causing weariness; tiresome.
  • *(Edmund Spenser) (c.1552–1599)
  • *:weary way
  • *(Samuel Taylor Coleridge) (1772-1834)
  • *:There passed a weary time.
  • Synonyms

    * See also

    Derived terms

    * wearily * weariness * wearisome

    Verb

    (en-verb)
  • To make or to become weary.
  • * Shakespeare (Julius Caesar )
  • So shall he waste his means, weary his soldiers,
  • * Milton
  • I would not cease / To weary him with my assiduous cries.
  • * 1898 , , (Moonfleet) Chapter 4
  • Yet there was no time to be lost if I was ever to get out alive, and so I groped with my hands against the side of the grave until I made out the bottom edge of the slab, and then fell to grubbing beneath it with my fingers. But the earth, which the day before had looked light and loamy to the eye, was stiff and hard enough when one came to tackle it with naked hands, and in an hour's time I had done little more than further weary myself and bruise my fingers.

    Synonyms

    * See also

    Derived terms

    * (l)

    See also

    * wary English ergative verbs

    lethargy

    English

    Noun

  • (pathology) A condition characterized by extreme fatigue or drowsiness, or prolonged sleep patterns.
  • * c. 1599 , (William Shakespeare), King Henry IV, Part 2 :
  • This Apoplexie is (as I take it) a kind of Lethargie , a sleeping of the blood, a horson Tingling.
  • * 2003 , Amanda Ripley, "At Last, the Pill for Men", Time , 20 Oct 2003:
  • So in order to avoid unpleasant side effects like lethargy and sexual dysfunction, most recent trials also gave men testosterone supplements.
  • A state of extreme torpor or apathy, especially with lack of emotion or interest; loosely, sluggishness, laziness.
  • * Atterbury
  • Europe lay then under a deep lethargy .
  • * 1995 , Bruce W Nelan, "Crime and Punishment", Time , 20 Mar 1995:
  • Yakovlev, one of the architects of the reforms put in place by Mikhail Gorbachev, says he too is "amazed" at the government's lethargy .
  • * 2008 , Nick Fletcher, The Guardian , 9 May 2008:
  • 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.