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Definition
in people: inactivity resulting from lethargy and lack of vigor or energyor:
in animals: a condition of biological rest or suspended animation — (could be in the evening, during the cold, or as in a dormant state all winter)
- She fell into a deep torpor.
torpor = lethargy (a state of lazy inactivity)
- And within five minutes, the class had sunk back into its usual torpor.J.K. Rowling -- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
- At length the death-stricken old man lay quietly in the torpor of mental and bodily exhaustion, with an imperceptible pulse, and breath that grew fainter and fainter, except when a long, deep, and irregular inspiration seemed to prelude the flight of his spirit.Nathaniel Hawthorne -- The Minister's Black Veil
- She was the only one of his family who could rouse the old man from the torpor in which he seemed to live.Cather, Willa -- My Antonia
- She still lay back in the chair, possessed by a torpor like the torpor of death—insensible to sound, insensible to touch.Collins, Wilkie -- The Haunted Hotel
- LOUISA awoke from a torpor, and her eyes languidly opened on her old bed at home, and her old room.Dickens, Charles -- Hard Times
- His years were too heavy upon him, the debility of disease and the lethargy and torpor of the silence and the cold were too profound.London, Jack -- The Red One
- Bazarov did not get up again that day, and passed the whole night in heavy, half-unconscious torpor.Ivan Turgenev -- Fathers and Sons
- The plan had been to feed the beasts and chain them in their torpor, just as the queen had done.George R.R. Martin -- A Dance With Dragons
- When there she threw herself on the bed with her clothes on, and lay in apparent torpor, as she had done once before on a memorable day of grief.George Eliot -- Middlemarch
- Delegate William Hooper of North Carolina, another signer of the Declaration of Independence, described a prevailing "torpor" in Congress.David G. McCullough -- 1776
- Scarcely had I finished my repast, when I felt myself sink by degrees into a strange torpor.Alexandre Dumas -- The Three Musketeers
- Thomas feels something crack inside, releasing him from the torpor that stifled his movements and slowed his thoughts.Abraham Verghese -- Cutting for Stone
- The bodies prone in them seemed startled out of their torpor by his movement.Joseph Conrad -- Lord Jim
- A dull torpor of the soul or the dullness of the thundercloud, charged with intellection and capable of the gloom of God?James Joyce -- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- They slept much of the time and often did nothing, in animal-like torpor.Robert A. Heinlein -- Tunnel In the Sky
- They shared in the torpor of the town and in its puerile agitations.Albert Camus -- The Plague
- The thought of a duty unfulfilled shook off his torpor, and he hurried from the abode of drunkenness.Jules Verne -- Around the World in 80 Days
- Then came again that rolling noise like thunder which had awakened me out of torpor.Jules Verne -- A Journey to the Center of the Earth
- Little by little she sank into a torpor—she fell silent.Upton Sinclair -- The Jungle
torpor = lethargy (lack of energy or vigor)
torpor = inactivity
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