Acedia
/əˈsiːdiə/noun
A listless, restless indifference in which nothing seems worth doing, especially as described by monastic writers.
The Greek roots
Literally: “not caring”
The story of the word
The desert monks called it the noonday demon: a flat restlessness that arrives in the fourth hour, makes the cell unbearable and makes every other life look better. Evagrius Ponticus listed ἀκηδία among the eight evil thoughts in the fourth century, and when the list was later cut to seven it survived as sloth, which keeps the laziness and loses the despair. The word itself says only not-caring, the care being κῆδος, what you owe your own people. Middle English had it first as accidie, through French, before scholars brought back the Greek shape.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Late Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
In a sentence
By the third month of lockdown he recognised it as acedia rather than tiredness.
Acedia is not depression, though it can sit beside it.