WordWealth: hebetude

heb·e·tude , n.

the state of being dull; lethargy. [1615–25; < LL hebetūdō dullness, bluntness, equiv. to L hebet- (s. of hebes) dull + -ūdō; see -TUDE]

—hebe·tudi·nous, adj. (Random House Webster's Unabridged). Look at Thesaurus

While too many Americans slouch toward a terminal funk of hebetude and sloth, Bendians race ahead with toned muscles, wide eyes and brains perpetually wired on adrenaline. —— 'Wild rides in the heart of central Oregon: Bent out of shape in Bend'; Washington Times, August 11, 2001

Earlier on, when we merely democratized fame, we defended the right of any mouth-breather to rise from deserved obscurity on the strength of his God-given hebetude. —— Florence King, 'The misanthrope's corner'; National Review, May 18, 1998

From that solitude, full of despair and terror, he was torn out brutally, with kicks and blows, passive, sunk in hebetude. —— Joseph Conrad in Nostromo

Had they deceived us
Or deceived themselves, the quiet-voiced elders,
Bequeathing us merely a receipt for deceit?
The serenity only a deliberate hebetude,
The wisdom only the knowledge of dead secrets
Useless in the darkness into which they peered
Or from which they turned their eyes. There is, it seems to us,
At best, only a limited value
In the knowledge derived from experience.
The knowledge imposes a pattern, and falsifies,
For the pattern is new in every moment
And every moment is a new and shocking
Valuation of all we have been. We are only undeceived
Of that which, deceiving, could no longer harm. —— T S Eliot in 'East Coker; Four Quartets'

A hebetude descends upon me, the air redounding with a languid opaqueness. A repining sigh escapes my lips and edges intothe turbid atmosphere, another second of life lost in vacillating non-comprehension. —— Leigh Brannon; Roget and I

The announced opinions and published papers favoring mechanical fluoridation of public drinking water are especially rich in fallacies, improper design, invalid use of statistical methods, omissions of contrary data, and just plain muddle-headedness and hebetude. Many of the blunders were so glaring that I gave them to my beginning freshman classes in statistics at the very first meeting. The students see through them straightway, and are afforded great amusement. Uproarious laughter frequently ensues. —— Davis
Department of Mathematics; Statistician Discusses Fluoridation's Early Trials

"hebetude" in-depth by Quinion, a British viewpoint

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