languish

verb

lan·guish ˈlaŋ-gwish

languished; languishing; languishes

Synonyms of languish next

intransitive verb

: to be or become feeble, weak, or enervated

Plants languish in the drought.

: to be or live in a state of depression or decreasing vitality

languished in prison for ten years

: to become dispirited

: to suffer neglect

the bill languished in the Senate for eight months

: to assume an expression of grief or emotion appealing for sympathy

languished at him through screwed-up eyes—

Edith Wharton

languisher noun

languishingly

ˈlaŋ-gwi-shiŋ-lē

adverb

languishment

ˈlaŋ-gwish-mənt

noun

Examples of languish in a Sentence

older people, especially, were languishing during the prolonged heat wave

Recent Examples on the Web Cheaper than the $25 million house that is languishing on the market less than ten minutes away. —

Curbed Staff, Curbed, 17 Nov. 2023 For all the talk about converting New York City’s languishing office buildings into housing, just one neighborhood has done it on a large scale: the financial district. —

Matthew Haag, New York Times, 17 Nov. 2023 Plus, often enough, the dummies weren’t found immediately, were found damaged, or never found at all—one languished in the desert for three years before being located. —

WIRED, 14 Nov. 2023 Most recently, Meta lowered the age limit for its languishing virtual reality products, dropping the minimum ages for its social app Horizon Worlds to 13 and its Quest VR headsets to 10. —

Naomi Nix, Washington Post, 7 Nov. 2023 House Republicans have no apparent plan to unite the fractured GOP majority, elect a new speaker and return to the work of Congress that has been languishing since hardliners ousted Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., at the start of the month. —

Lisa Mascaro, Farnoush Amiri, Stephen Groves and Keving Freking The Associated Press, Arkansas Online, 21 Oct. 2023 The sprawling nine-bedroom estate at the heart of the real estate war has languished empty for the last two years. —

Nancy Dillon, Rolling Stone, 3 Nov. 2023 But Connor and thousands of other Californians have been languishing on a waitlist. —

Emily Alpert Reyes, Los Angeles Times, 1 Nov. 2023 Boeing's Starliner is languishing and still hasn't flown any astronauts. —

Stephen Clark, Ars Technica, 1 Nov. 2023 See More

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'languish.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.