[f. LANGUISH v. + -ING1.] The action of the verb LANGUISH; languor. With a and pl.: An attack of languor or faintness, esp. such as proceeds from disease.
c. 1374. Chaucer, Troylus, I. 529. Then were I quyt of langwysshyng yn drede.
1382. Wyclif, Luke iv. 40. Sike men with dyuerse langwischingis.
c. 1477. Caxton, Jason, 8 b. Feling also the languisshing and smarting of their woundes.
1500–20. Dunbar, Poems, lxxxv. 23. Bricht sygn, gladyng our languissing.
1601. Shaks., All’s Well, I. iii. 235. A remedie … To cure the desperate languishings whereof The King is render’d lost.
1611. Bible, Ps. xli. 3. The Lord will strengthen him vpon the bed of languishing.
a. 1688. Cudworth, Immut. Mor. (1731), 161. If this Harmonical Temperature of the whole Body be disturbed … Weakness and Languishing will immediately seize upon it.
1711. Steele, Spect., No. 140, ¶ 2. He … speaks of Flames, Tortures, Languishings and Ecstasies.
a. 1715. Burnet, Own Time (1724), I. 391. He fell into a languishing, which, after some months carried him off.
1816. Chalmers, Lett., in Life (1851), II. 53. To sustain you under all the sickenings, and faintings, and languishings of your earthly disease.
