acedia.

1. A state of weary apathy or restless disengagement in which meaningful activity feels difficult.

2. Spiritual indifference understood in Christian tradition as the sin of sloth.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• succumb to acedia
• spiritual acedia
• a period of acedia

On the page

In the silent abbey, his acedia took the form of endless pacing and unfinished prayers.

Usage notes

Primary category: horror / gothic literary. Lexical Type: Word. Forms: Usually uncountable; no ordinary plural in this sense. Commonness: uncommon (editorial estimate; not a corpus frequency statistic). Legacy lexical fields mirror sense 1; numbered fields keep each relevant meaning separate. Research distinction: Direct entry and word-history discussion read: weary apathy/restlessness, also called accidie; older sin-of-sloth sense now rare. Two current emotional/historical religious perspectives retain genuine distinct use, without making all weariness sinful or clinical depression. Individually reviewed for a precise writer function, not selected merely for rarity. Original definitions/examples; commonness editorial, not a corpus statistic. Genre suitability does not establish inherent fear or emotional intensity. Writing functions: loss of engagement and purpose, historical monastic spiritual neglect.