v. [f. LETHARGY sb. + -IZE. Gr. had ληθαργίζεσθαι pass., to be forgotten.] trans. To affect with lethargy. Hence Lethargized, Lethargizing ppl. adjs.
1614. T. Adams, Devil’s Banq., v. 254. The Lethargiz’d is not lesse sicke, because hee complaines not so loud as the aguish. Ibid. (1633), Exp. 2 Peter iii. 10. 1307. Others are lethargiz’d with a drousie dulnesse.
1805. Southey, Madoc, I. i. Some philtre … to lethargize The British blood that came from Owen’s veins.
1817. Lady Morgan, France (1818), I. 53. A … sergeant was giving a sort of lethargized attention … to the details which the elder dame was communicating.
1830. Coleridge, Table-t., 23 May. All bitters are poisons, and operate by stilling, and depressing, and lethargizing the irritability. Ibid. (a. 1834), in Lit. Rem. (1836), III. 8. The surest preventive or antidote against the freezing poison, the lethargizing hemlock, of the doctrine of the Sacramentaries.
