Idle

Idle - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

I'DLE, a.

1. Not employed; unoccupied with business; inactive; doing nothing.

Why stand ye here all the day idle? Mat 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. Mat 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.

I'DLE, 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 - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

I'DLENESS, 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. Eccl 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.]

i'-d'-l, i'-d'-l-nes: Both words, adjective and noun, render different Hebrew words (from `atsel, "to be lazy," raphah, "to relax," and shaqaT, "to be quiet"). According to the Yahwistic narrative Pharaoh's retort to the complaints of the Israelites was a charge of indolence (Ex 5:8,17). It was a favorite thought of Hebrew wisdom--practical philosophy of life--that indolence inevitably led to poverty and want (Pr 19:15; Ec 10:18). The "virtuous woman" was one who would not eat the "bread of idleness" (Pr 31:27). In Eze 16:49 for the King James Version "abundance of idleness," the Revised Version (British and American) has "prosperous ease." In the New Testament "idle" generally renders the Greek word argos, literally, "inactive," "useless" (Mt 20:3,6). In Lu 24:11 "idle talk" corresponds to one Greek word which means "empty gossip" or "nonsensical talk."

T. Lewis