idle
IDLE, a.
1. Not employed; unoccupied with business; inactive; doing nothing.
Why stand ye here all the day idle? Matt.20.
To be idle, is to be vicious.
2. Slothful; given to rest and ease; averse to labor or employment; lazy; as an idle man; an idle fellow.
3. Affording leisure; vacant; not occupied; as idle time; idle hours.
4. Remaining unused; unemployed; applied to things; as, my sword or spear is idle.
5. Useless; vain; ineffectual; as idle rage.
6. Unfruitful; barren; not productive of good.
Of antres vast and idle desarts.
Idle weeds.
7. Trifling; vain; of no importance; as an idle story; an idle reason; idle arguments.
8. Unprofitable; not tending to edification.
Every idle word that men shall speak,they shall give an account thereof in the day of judgment. Matt.12.
Idle differs from lazy; the latter implying constitutional or habitual aversion or indisposition to labor or action, sluggishness; whereas idle, in its proper sense, denotes merely unemployed. An industrious man may be idle, but he cannot be lazy.
IDLE, v.i. To lose or spend time in inaction, or without being employed in business.
To idle away, in a transitive sense, to spend in idleness; as, to idle away time.
idleness
IDLENESS, n. Abstinence from labor or employment; the state of a person who is unemployed in labor, or unoccupied in business; the state of doing nothing. Idleness is the parent of vice.
Through the idleness of the hands the house droppeth through. Eccles.10.
1. Aversion to labor; reluctance to be employed, or to exertion either of body or mind; laziness; sloth; sluggishness. This is properly laziness; but idleness is often the effect of laziness, and sometimes this word may be used for it.
2. Unimportance; trivialness.
Apes of idleness.
3. Inefficacy; uselessness. Little used.
4. Barrenness; worthlessness. Little used.
5. Emptiness; foolishness; infatuation; as idleness of brain. Little used.