Origin of Listless

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is Allison in San Diego.

Hi, Allison, welcome.

Hey there, what’s up?

Well, I thought I’d call you guys because last weekend I was on the phone with my mother.

She’s 87 and she lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

And she’s just recovering from a minor illness and she told me she was feeling listless.

Now, she’s a former English teacher and she loves words and she sort of said to me,

You know, I feel so listless, but I don’t even know what the word means.

Where does it come from, you know?

It’s nothing to do with lists, you know?

It’s not like I’ve lost my list.

And she told me that she had talked to my brother that morning,

And they talked about it, and he was near the ocean.

He often was around boats,

And he speculated that perhaps it was something to do with, you know,

Boats list to one side or the other,

And perhaps she wasn’t listing in either direction.

And that she was somehow neutral, you know, becalmed.

So anyway, we had a great discussion, but I thought,

Well, why don’t I call the Way With Words guys and see what they have to say?

That’s a great question.

So is it a bucket list, a short list, a grocery list, a laundry list?

Something to do with a ship at sea?

Yeah.

That’s right.

We know that it can’t be that, but what is it?

Where does this word come from?

Well, let me ask you a private question about your mother.

Is your mother somebody with a lust for life?

Does she live vigorously?

Is she one of these kind of people who just loves to just live and be alive?

Yes.

When she was younger, she was a mountain climber.

She was full of energy and passion.

That’s true.

So I think it’s kind of distressing for her to find herself in this listless thing at this point.

I asked you, Alison, that’s a leading question,

Because the list in listless has nothing to do with lists of names or groceries,

Has nothing to do with whether or not a ship is upright.

It’s related etymologically to the word lust.

They come from the same old English root,

And they mean desire or longing or wanting.

And so if your mother is listless, she is literally without lust.

She does not have the lust to carry on her life

And to do the ordinary things that keep us alive

And keep us interested in the world.

Well, maybe she does.

She sounds like she probably has had a very long, good run, right?

She’s had a great life, yes.

And she’s going to be so interested in this because she loves finding out the roots of words.

And I think you’re right.

You know, she was feeling a little bit like she’d lost her lust for life and she was missing it.

But she’d merely lost her list.

Well, I said at the end of the call, I hope you find your list.

Now I can tell her, I hope you found your lust for life.

She needs a lover.

She needs to take a paramour.

Oh, I’ll pop that along.

Yes, that’s a good piece of advice for her.

Yes, a little TMI.

No, TMA, too much advice.

There we go.

Who knows?

All right, well, I hope she feels better,

And do tell her that we wish her the best.

All right, Allison?

She’s on the mend, and thank you so much for that.

Our pleasure.

Excellent.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Grant, I’m looking at the Oxford English Dictionary,

And indeed another definition for this particular list

Is pleasure, joy, or delight,

As well as appetite or craving.

So it makes perfect sense.

You can find it in Beowulf.

And a lot of the Old English stuff that you might learn in school

If you’re studying linguistics or if you’re learning about the history of poetry

And English and so on and so forth.

So it’s there.

L-Y-S-T-A-N is the word that you want to look for in Old English.

But another great example of how words can be spelled exactly the same

But come from completely different roots, right?

English is a mongrel tongue.

As long as you remember that, then this stuff won’t be very surprising.

It is indeed. Call us with your questions about language, 877-929-9673,

Or send them an email to words@waywordradio.org.