[f. the verb.]
1. The action or state of languishing.
c. 1380. Wyclif, Serm., Sel. Wks. I. 198. Crist was … occupied in heeling of syke men and men þat were in languishe. Ibid. (1382), Luke iv. 40. Sike men with dyuerse langwischingis [v.r. languyschis, languisches].
1485. Caxton, Chas. Gt., 233. Of the languysshe that was comynge to Charles, he wyste not, how sone it was comyng.
1562. Phaër, Æneid, IX. B b iij b. The purple floure that … In languish withering dies.
1592. Shaks., Rom. & Jul., I. ii. 49. One desparate greefe cures with anothers languish.
1613–6. W. Browne, Brit. Past., I. i. 11. Faire Nymph, surcease this death-alluring languish.
1682. T. A., Carolina, 19. It … being … admirable in the languishes of the Spirit Faintings.
1718. Entertainer, xix. 129. Religion is upon the Languish, and only the Ghost of Godliness remains.
1833. Hartley Coleridge, Poems, I. 118. A long record of perishable languish.
2. A tender look or glance.
1715–20. Pope, Iliad, XVIII. 50. The blue languish of soft Alia’s eye.
1728–46. Thomson, Spring, 949. Then forth he walks, Beneath the trembling languish of her beam.
1802. W. Irving, Lett. J. Oldstyle (1824), 19. An arch glance in one box was rivalled by a smile in another;… and in a fourth a most bewitching languish carried all before it.
