indolent

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Habitually lazy and avoiding any kind of work or effort.

   The indolent clerk left most of the paperwork for someone else to finish.

2. 2
   adj

   Of an illness or growth: slow to develop and causing little or no pain.

   The doctor described it as an indolent tumor that grows very slowly.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Indolent comes from Latin in-, “not,” and dolere, “to suffer” or “cause pain.” It was originally a medical term for a painless ulcer or tumour before developing its modern meaning “lazy.”

From French indolent or directly from Late Latin indolēns, from in- (“not”) + dolēns (“hurting”), from doleo (“to hurt”). The later sense of “living easily, slothful” perhaps developed in French.

Topics

External links

• Google Images
• Cambridge Dictionary
• Wiktionary