What's the difference between lazy and listless?

Lazy


Definition:

  • (superl.) Disinclined to action or exertion; averse to labor; idle; shirking work.
  • (superl.) Inactive; slothful; slow; sluggish; as, a lazy stream.
  • (superl.) Wicked; vicious.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The "lazy-T" technique consists of a surgical horizontal and vertical shortening of the involved portion of the lower eyelid.
  • (2) In February last year the BBC was forced to apologise to the Mexican ambassador after a joke made by the three presenters that the nation's cars were like the people "lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaning against a fence asleep looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat".
  • (3) Extensive research among the Afghan National Army – 68 focus groups – and US military personnel alike concluded: "One group sees the other as a bunch of violent, reckless, intrusive, arrogant, self-serving profane, infidel bullies hiding behind high technology; and the other group [the US soldiers] generally views the former as a bunch of cowardly, incompetent, obtuse, thieving, complacent, lazy, pot-smoking, treacherous, and murderous radicals.
  • (4) But Shukrallah says groups like Dostour are weak not through laziness but because they were not allowed to develop under Mubarak and his predecessors.
  • (5) Simon Parker, a senior lecturer at the University of York, told the New Statesman that, during the recent dispute over lecturers' pay, his mobile phone number was posted on Facebook, with the instruction to students to give him a call if they felt they had been "fucked over" by the "lazy bastards in the AUT".
  • (6) For every drop shot that was loose, lazy and tossed away a point, there was another that smacked of insouciant brilliance.
  • (7) All Cavendishes are lazy by nature, and my entire life has been a battle against indolence.
  • (8) The logic is transitive and not direct: by “inner cities” Ryan meant black; by describing black men as not “learning” the “value and culture of work” – and since Charles Murray has called poor people “lazy” – Ryan was saying black men were lazy.
  • (9) Even more pointedly, he attacked the common Republican philosophical refuge of the doctrine of unintended consequences, or, as he put it, “We can’t do anything because we don’t yet know everything.” “The bullshitters have gotten pretty lazy,” he said, and the previous six hours of debate coverage on Fox News could have told you as much.
  • (10) I see evidence for this every week when I hear otherwise bright and articulate students justify their political opinions with vague, lazy arguments.
  • (11) In his book Fight the Power , Chuck rails against everything from Hollywood to the sports industry for portraying blacks as 'watermelon stealin', chicken eatin', knee knockin', eye poppin' lazy, crazy, dancin', submissive, Toms.
  • (12) Hate the smoking ban, HS2, Brussels, travellers, burqas, regulation, tax, Boris, debt, windfarms, quangos, foreign aid, crime, Abu Qatada, Muslims, tuition fees, lazy people, asylum seekers, the hunting ban?
  • (13) Perpetuating the myth that DLA prevents disabled people from working just stirs the assertion that disabled people are lazy scroungers, when the truth is that they would like nothing more than to work and contribute like everyone else.
  • (14) Their MPs tend to spend years chipping away at their seats before they win, getting under the skin of places in a way other parties don't, and once elected tend not to get lazy or complacent.
  • (15) David Miliband's heartache at leadership loss revealed in new Hillary Clinton emails Read more Longtime Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal also wrote a number of memos to the secretary of state on American politics, including one describing the current Speaker of the House, John Boehner, as “louche, alcoholic [and] lazy” while predicting that Mitt Romney would run for president on a ticket with former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, whom he compared to Dick Cheney.
  • (16) This weather pushes players to be a bit lazy, to lose a bit of tension, a bit of sharpness, after that you pass slow, you do not react to the second balls, the time goes on and on, then when you wake up, it is half-time.
  • (17) David Ruffley, a Conservative MP on the Treasury select committee, said other risk-taking bankers and lazy regulators should also be examined.
  • (18) John Byrom, a lazy, self-indulgent 18th-century versifier, had three black hedgehogs on his coat of arms.
  • (19) Such curiosity is not a big ask, and demanding such rigorous thinking from tutors seems a much more effective way of getting diverse students into top universities than creating a mythical list of "better" subjects, writing them into the league tables and thereby sanctioning the lazy dismissal of anyone who does not fit the mould.
  • (20) (And the tech, if I wasn’t as lazy, could help me get better at cooking.)

Listless


Definition:

  • (a.) Having no desire or inclination; indifferent; heedless; spiritless.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) After six months of sessions, when the infant manifested full-blown weaning patterns, the mother reported symptoms indicating a major depressive episode, such as pervasive dejection and rejection, listlessness, and anxiety attacks.
  • (2) I watched as a class of listless 10-year-olds struggled with an aimless lesson in creationism.
  • (3) Its findings – including evidence that the Republican nominee is making dramatic headway with female voters, young people and those in the heartlands of the mid-west – appear to confirm that Obama's listless performance at the debate, and by contrast Romney's strong showing, has translated into a powerful political force.
  • (4) Within 3 hours of bacterial inoculation, all lambs that received P haemolytica were anorectic, listless, and febrile, and had hyperpnea and dyspnea.
  • (5) Sturm, Stahl, and Heer sit a few chairs down from Zschäpe in what appears a state of permanent listlessness.
  • (6) But Farber's lab was listless and empty, a bare warren of chemicals and glass jars connected to the main hospital through a series of icy corridors.
  • (7) Bojan Krkic and Xherdan Shaqiri were substituted after strangely listless performances and there was a collective gasp from the crowd when the public announcer named Marko Arnautovic as the man of the match.
  • (8) "People are now lethargic and listless because of starvation.
  • (9) And there is nothing more elderly than listlessness and fear.
  • (10) Everything else is flashback, rewinding to show the drip-drip of humiliations that turn a listless pizza delivery man into a killer with nothing to lose.
  • (11) The second half began as a listless affair until De Bruyne took charge.
  • (12) Tambor’s children are self-involved, sexually confused and in the middle of various life crises, with Girls star Gaby Hoffman particularly impressive as listless youngest daughter Ali.
  • (13) This exploratory study, conducted among 104 male workers free from cardiovascular disease (CVD), tested the association between burnout and two of its common concomitants--tension and listlessness--and cardiovascular risk factors.
  • (14) In a typical outbreak, 5% of the pullets were stunted and listless with unkempt feathers.
  • (15) All infected pigs showed inappetence and listlessness, but there were no clinical signs of nervous disorder.
  • (16) There is a peculiar pridelessness in the current Britain, a listless indifference to the morals it holds and represents.
  • (17) About half of under-25-year-olds in the labour force are without a job, and this threatens to leave the country with a listless lost generation for whom unemployment is the norm.
  • (18) Clinical signs of hyperviscosity syndrome in a 6-year-old dog included listlessness, polydipsia, anorexia, vomiting, and recurrent bleeding from the gums.
  • (19) In Godard's film, the Concordia plays the role of a decadent limbo where the tourists drift listlessly amid the ritzy interiors.
  • (20) So high, in fact, that the cast appears to be suffering from altitude sickness, with characters staggering around listlessly while peering upwards, or pulling faces like geese struggling to choose between souvenir cagoules in Glen Nevis Visitor Centre.