From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Indolence \In"do*lence\, noun [L. indolentia freedom from pain: cf. F. indolence.]
1. Freedom from that which pains, or harasses, as toil, care, grief, etc. [Obs.]
I have ease, if it may not rather be called indolence. --Bp. Hough.
2. The quality or condition of being indolent; inaction, or lack of exertion of body or mind, proceeding from love of ease or aversion to toil; habitual idleness; indisposition to labor; laziness; sloth; inactivity.
Life spent in indolence, and therefore sad. --Cowper.
As there is a great truth wrapped up in ''diligence,'' what a lie, on the other hand, lurks at the root of our present use of the word ''indolence''! This is from ''in'' and ''doleo,'' not to grieve; and indolence is thus a state in which we have no grief or pain; so that the word, as we now employ it, seems to affirm that indulgence in sloth and ease is that which would constitute for us the absence of all pain. --Trench.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
noun
1: inactivity resulting from a dislike of work [syn: {laziness}]
From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:
101 Moby Thesaurus words for "indolence": a wise passiveness, abeyance, apathy, catalepsy, catatonia, cautiousness, circumspection, contemplation, contemplative life, creeping, deadliness, deathliness, deliberateness, deliberation, dilatoriness, do-nothing policy, do-nothingism, do-nothingness, dolce far niente, dormancy, drawl, entropy, ergophobia, faineancy, faineantise, foot-dragging, hoboism, idleness, immobility, inaction, inactivity, indifference, inertia, inertness, inexertion, just being, laggardness, laissez-aller, laissez-faire, laissez-faireism, languidness, languor, lassitude, latency, laze, laziness, leisureliness, lentitude, lentor, lethargy, listlessness, lotus-eating, meditation, mere existence, mere tropism, neutralism, neutrality, neutralness, noninvolvement, nonparticipation, nonresistance, nonviolence, nonviolent resistance, oscitancy, pacifism, paralysis, passive resistance, passive self-annihilation, passiveness, passivism, passivity, pokiness, policy, procrastination, quiescence, quietism, reluctance, remissness, shiftlessness, slackness, sloth, slothfulness, slouch, slowness, sluggardy, sluggishness, spring fever, stagnancy, stagnation, standpattism, stasis, suspense, tentativeness, torpidity, torpor, vagrancy, vegetation, vis inertiae, vita contemplativa, waiting game, watching and waiting
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