hebetude🔊

Hirsch, with his arms tied behind his back, had been bundled violently into one of the smaller rooms. For many hours he remained apparently forgotten, stretched lifelessly on the floor. From that solitude, full of despair and terror, he was torn out brutally, with kicks and blows, passive, sunk in hebetude.

Incuriousness was the most potent ally of our imposed order; for Eastern government rested not so much on consent or force, as on the common supinity, hebetude, lack-a-daisiness, which gave a minority undue effect.

This dwelling on the past and relative hebetude towards the present – this emotional dulling of current feeling and memory – is nothing like Jimmie’s organic amnesia.

Both, however, began to feel the oncreeping of a sleepy hebetude which, under the circumstances, was most undesirable.