The word
"torpor" refers to a state of sluggishness or mental and physical inactivity.
Full definition
The common poorwill, Phalaenoptilus nuttallii, is a bird found throughout Western North America and is most notable for its winter time habits — it is the only bird species known to engage in anything like hibernation and will spend almost the entire winter in a state
of torpor hidden away in rocky nests.
The state of a mind thus awakened
from torpor is well expressed in these words, which I take from a friend's letter: --
Furthermore, some animals, including lemurs, can enter into hibernation or another energy - conserving state known
as torpor, which could have aided survival on the open ocean.
Animals
in torpor can drop their body temperatures to startling extremes.
In Creative Evolution Bergson speaks of the «necessity... of a process the inverse of materiality» (CE 268) 2 Its necessity is based not only on the need to restrict the material tendency
toward torpor, dissociation, and determinism, but also to bring into existence the material and conscious forms which permit the performance of truly free and creative acts.
Hedgehogs, on the other hand, are subject to a condition
called torpor when it gets cold.
Emotional complication might have elevated Maze Runner: The Death Cure out of its
programmatic torpor.
The images, lucid and confrontational, exude an almost gestural quality as they cut from interior and exterior spaces, with Yorke waltzing in a sleep -
like torpor toward a hole — or spacious studio igloo?
Isabelle Adjani does ferocious work in the title role of Camille Claudel, despite being stuck in a standard biopic that requires her to skip from one emotion to another as the historical record dictates; she's frequently mesmerizing to watch, but director Bruno Nuytten (then Adjani's offscreen partner) clearly believes that tempestuous behavior is a magical cure - all for
narrative torpor, and leans on her energy a bit too hard.
Repetition of the mellifluous can
become torpor concealed by piety.
The week will pass painlessly, anaesthetised in an overheated, over-alcoholised and sleep -
deprived torpor.
Douglas Carswell's defection to Ukip shook Westminster out of its
summer torpor, releasing a series of powerful political tremors.
Ether (as well as hypnotism) might explain why people, when in the presence of dragons, are either stunned into a
helpless torpor or lose their minds.
The bad news for human wannabes is that there's more to
winter torpor than the will to sleep.
We've gone from the
earlier torpor of a swampish lost world to today's art, in which «The level of activity has gotten to where the dinosaur have got bees up their butts!»
There was also no link between food offered on a given day and the dunnart's
torpor later the same day, showing that the change was driven by unpredictability, not short - term energy levels, says Munn.
Now it seems that it isn't the lack of food but the unpredictability of its supply that
triggers torpor — at least as far a small Australian marsupial called the fat - tailed dunnart (Sminthopsis crassicaudata) is concerned.
He thinks hormonal triggers associated with feeding may be
driving torpor, not just energy levels.
But dunnarts on unpredictable diets
entered torpor more often and for longer: on average, they were torpid for 270 minutes per day, while those on a restricted spent just over 200 minutes torpid.
After giving the dunnarts a month to get used to their diet, the team continued the diets for a further 19 days and recorded the length and times of the animals»
torpor over this period, using nests installed with temperature sensors and video recorders.
I was under the impression there was already an invention to
induce torpor in human beings - television.
This translates to «Disease,
mental torpor, doubt, inattentiveness, idleness, indulgence, illusory thinking, failure to proceed and unsteadiness are the obstacles causing scattering of the balanced mind and prevent its inward movement.»
A series of gun battles follow, none staged with quite enough verve or imagination to break through the
pervasive torpor.
Otherwise, the stupid plot, dismal dialogue, moral turpitude and
dispiriting torpor of this movie makes watching it utterly pointless.
That idea might possess real emotional kick if Garland actually invested in Lena's relationship (some brief flashbacks can't shoulder that weight alone), or resisted drowning every scene in
Tarkovsky torpor.
Brief appearances from Mia Wasikowska as Eve's less mature sister Ava (she still drinks blood at the source), Anton Yelchin as Adam's rocker pal Ian and John Hurt as Christopher Marlowe lift the film out of its
stylish torpor, and maybe one or two more appearances like this would have given it a boost.
Hittman's superlatively subjective camera sexualizes all in its path, damp with the New York City summer's cruel humidity and a hazy,
exhausted torpor.
The movie exists inside a depressive murk — a
muted torpor that mirrors these women's private sorrows.
Filmed on location in New Orleans, everything has that Deep South stilted
humid torpor that soundstages and green screens just can't recreate.
It is your performance that breaks the children out of their
morning torpor and prepares them to learn.
Some scholars warned that the lagging performance of American students would eventually lead to
economic torpor.
The Suburban's
passing torpor is forgivable, given the drivetrain's best - in - class EPA rating of 15/21 mpg city / highway with rear - or four - wheel drive.
They also drop a special biotoxin which can be used to create
shocking torpor darts and is 2x as powerful as regular ones.
Aiming to shake us out of our
intellectual torpor, Craven made a YouTube flick called «The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See».
An alarm bell rang for a few seconds, cutting through the
autumn torpor like a blast of summer sunlight, and Rangel realized that she had led them past the schoolyard.
In the
post-prandial torpor, world problem solvers gathered on the deck — Afghanistan, Iraq, George Bush, the Da Vinci Code's view of Mary and Jesus — and my personal favourite — how to get the yellow dye out your hair by using purple shampoo.
University art galleries, in a
sluggish torpor through July and August, suddenly are occupied by cross-legged students sketching madly.
He sure ought to, old Howard Schnellenberger, the ambitious, pipe - smoking wizard coach who in five seasons led the Hurricanes
from torpor to the 1983 national championship and then jumped ship.
A state of suppressed physiological activity is known
as torpor, and a handful of mice, bats, and birds employ it on a daily basis.
But body temperature of transgenic mice plummeted and they stopped moving, entering into a hibernationlike state
called torpor.