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Listless

Mood
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Expressing a mood of apathy, weariness, or indifference, conveyed through slack rhythm, muted imagery, or emotional detachment.

Detailed Definition
Listless mood in poetry conveys weary apathy through slack rhythm, faded imagery, and indifferent diction; it appears in summer lethargy poems, post-trauma verse, or urban ennui—like some of Ashbery or Larkin—where the speaker drifts without purpose, reflecting modern disconnection or the emotional exhaustion that follows intense experience or prolonged despair.
Example
Example in poetry:
In “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” the speaker’s listless indecision (“Do I dare?”) conveys emotional fatigue; In “Dover Beach,” Matthew Arnold’s lament is listless with lost faith; Sylvia Plath’s “Tulips” portrays listless hospital recovery (“I have nothing to do with explosions”); Emily Dickinson’s “After great pain, a formal feeling comes” describes listless numbness after grief; In “The Waste Land,” T.S. Eliot’s typist’s mechanical encounter shows listless resignation; Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush” contrasts a listless landscape with a bird’s song.
Additional Notes
Listless mood denotes lack of energy or motivation; signaled by flat rhythm, sparse imagery, and passive voice—common in poems of illness or ennui; overlaps with apathetic, languid, and weary moods; useful for exploring emotional depletion or societal stagnation.
Also Known As
Lethargic Apathetic Sluggish Unmotivated Inert
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