velleities

Noun

velleity (countable and uncountable, plural velleities)

1. The lowest degree of desire or volition; a total lack of effort to act.
   • Rousseau showed through life a singular proneness for being convinced by his own eloquence; he was always his own first convert; and this reconciles his power as a writer with his weakness as a man. He and all like him mistake emotion for conviction, velleity for resolve, the brief eddy of...1870, James Russell Lowell, Rousseau and the Sentimentalists
2. A slight wish not followed by any effort to obtain.
   • All were born late enough to breathe the atmosphere of the new poetry young; all had poetical velleities, and a certain amount, if not of originality, of capacity to write poetry. But they were not poets; they were only poetical curiosities.1896, George Saintsbury, chapter II, in A History of Nineteenth Century Literature