languish

in a sentence

Cat languishes in cellar for two days.  (source) Stephen King, Misery, 1987

At present, Mulch was languishing in a stone-walled cell in LEP Central.  (source) Eoin Colfer, Artemis Fowl, 2001

Maybe all hospitals should import groups of rabble-rousing punk rockers to kick-start the languishing patients' hearts.  (source) Gayle Forman, If I Stay, 2009

Over a century, languishing in chains, Dare I now hope for freedom from my woes?  (source) Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies, 1994

The careless owner hardly noticed it, and for some years it languished on the shelves, acquiring a pattern of mildew across the cover.  (source) Nicole Krauss, The History of Love, 2005

In Russia just now, a young man could get thrown in jail for stealing a loaf of bread or a bottle of vodka and, because the criminal justice system was clogged, languish in a detention center for a year or even four years before his case came to trial.  (source) Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains, 2003

It profits me but little, after all, that a vigilant authority should protect the tranquillity of my pleasures and constantly avert all dangers from my path, without my care or my concern, if this same authority is the absolute mistress of my liberty and of my life, and if it so monopolizes all the energy of existence that when it languishes everything languishes around it, that when it sleeps everything must sleep, that when it dies the State itself must perish.†  (source) Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy In America, Volume 1, 1835

More rueful was it not methinks to see The nation in Aegina droop, what time Each living thing, e'en to the little worm, All fell, so full of malice was the air (And afterward, as bards of yore have told, The ancient people were restor'd anew From seed of emmets) than was here to see The spirits, that languish'd through the murky vale Up-pil'd on many a stack.†  (source) Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, 1320

24:7 The new wine mourneth, the vine languisheth, all the merryhearted do sigh.†  (source) The Bible, Old Testament, 1611

As he listened to all this Don Quixote was in a state of breathless amazement, for immediately the countless adventures like this, with windows, gratings, gardens, serenades, lovemakings, and languishings, that he had read of in his trashy books of chivalry, came to his mind.†  (source) Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, 1615

The lines of her countenance changed from the rigidity of business to the softness of love when she saw Jude, and she bent her eyes languishingly upon him.†  (source) Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure, 1895

Under no circumstances must he lend himself to any additional blandishments or languishments in this field.†  (source) Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy, 1925

There are insect carcasses everywhere, squashed against the windowpanes and walls, languishing in pools of water behind the taps of the sink.  (source) Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake, 2003