indisposition

English

Etymology

From Middle English indisposicioun, from Middle French indisposicion.

Pronunciation

• (US) IPA^(key): /ɪnˌdɪspəˈzɪʃən/

Noun

indisposition (countable and uncountable, plural indispositions)

1. A mild illness, the state of being indisposed.
   • 1751 December (indicated as 1752), Henry Fielding, chapter 7, in Amelia, volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), London: […] A[ndrew] Millar […], →OCLC:

     I was scarce sooner recovered from my indisposition than Amelia herself fell ill.

   • 1817 (date written), [Jane Austen], Persuasion; published in Northanger Abbey: And Persuasion. […], volumes (please specify |volume=III or IV), London: John Murray, […], 20 December 1817 (indicated as 1818), →OCLC:

     She began not to understand a word they said, and was obliged to plead indisposition and excuse herself.

   • 2017, Alexander Theroux, Einstein's Beets, page 514:

     During those three hellish days at Gettysburg, General Robert E. Lee was badly suffering from a severe case of diarrhea after having eaten too many cherries, an indisposition—given his ill-considered and ultimately amateurishly fatal decision for the Confederacy to attack from the front (and relatively below) on July 3, 1863—that cost his army a victory that day, an incredible mismaneuver and unstrategic folly that became, as it turned out, the turning-point of the entire war that led to the full and final defeat of the South.

2. A state of not being disposed to do something; disinclination; unwillingness.
   • 1989, Thomas Robert Malthus, John Pullen, Principles of Political Economy, volume 2, page 435:

     He argued that the progress of wealth could be impeded not only by an indisposition to produce, but also by an indisposition to consume […]

3. A bad mood or disposition.
   • 1597, Francis Bacon, Essays

     Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?

Translations

mild illness

• Bulgarian: неразположение (bg) n (nerazpoloženie)
• German: Unpässlichkeit (de) f
• Greek: αδιαθεσία (el) (adiathesía)
• Hungarian: gyengélkedés (hu)
• Irish: meath-thinneas m
• Portuguese: indisposição (pt) f
• Spanish: achaque (es) m

French

Pronunciation

• Audio

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Noun

indisposition f (plural indispositions)

1. indisposition

Further reading

• “indisposition”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.