Word.ws English Dictionary

languidly

languidly adverb: in a languid manner, without force or effort, in a manner requiring little energy or exertion.

Adverb

languidly (comparative more languidly, superlative most languidly)

  1. In a languid manner, without force or effort, in a manner requiring little energy or exertion.
    • He languidly waved his limp wrist, glad to see us, but not wanting to expend the energy to let us know that.
    • Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one...1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case”, in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC, page 137

Examples of languidly in a sentence

  • “It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,” said Lord Henry, languidly.1891, Oscar Wilde, chapter I, in The Picture of Dorian Gray, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., →OCLC, page 2:
  • Miss Gimblet, who seemed to feel that the presence of her friend called for something extra professional in the way of attitude, reclined on the bed and languidly smoked a cigarette.1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 95:

Forms of languidly

comparativemore languidly
superlativemost languidly

Origin of languidly

From languid + -ly.

Questions about languidly

What does languidly mean?
Languidly means in a languid manner, without force or effort, in a manner requiring little energy or exertion.
How do you use languidly in a sentence?
“It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done,” said Lord Henry, languidly.
What part of speech is languidly?
Languidly is an adverb.

Words near languidly in the dictionary

  1. languette
  2. languettes
  3. languid
  4. languid schizoid
  5. languidity
  6. languidly
  7. languidness
  8. languids
  9. languish
  10. languished
  11. languisher

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: languidly (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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