inanition.

1. Severe weakness or exhaustion caused by having too little food or water.

2. A loss of intellectual, moral, or social energy that leaves something inactive or ineffective.

Use it for

Words that belong together

• suffer from inanition
• death from inanition
• physical inanition

On the page

By the time the rescuers arrived, several prisoners were suffering from inanition.

Usage notes

Primary category: literary / elevated prose. 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: MW distinguishes deprivation-related exhaustion from loss of intellectual/social vitality; separate physical and figurative senses. Writing functions: nuance, characterization.