a. Also 7 flaccide, (8 flacid). [a. F. flaccide (Cotgr.), ad. L. flaccidus, f. flaccus flabby.]
1. Wanting in stiffness, hanging or lying loose or in wrinkles; limber, limp; flabby. Chiefly of flesh and similar structures; rarely of a person.
1620. Venner, Via Recta, v. 87. Whosoeuer shall vse to drinke milke, because that it is hurtfull to the gummes and teeth; for the one it maketh flaccide, and the other subiect to putrefaction; must haue speciall regard to wash his mouth presently after the drinking of it, with wine, or strong beere.
1660. Boyle, New Exp. Phys. Mech., iv. 46. The sides of the Bladder grew flaccid.
1704. F. Fuller, Med. Gymn. (1711), 31–2. Yet are the Muscles not Flaccid, but Tense and Firm.
1751. Johnson, Rambler, No. 117, 30 April, ¶ 8. Heads, in appearance empty, have teemed with notions upon rising ground, as the flaccid sides of a football would have swelled out into stiffness and extension.
1848. Thackeray, Bk. Snobs, Wks. IX. 385. His fair hair hanging over his white face, his double chin over his flaccid, whitey-brown shirt-collar. Ibid. (1848), Van. Fair, lxi. The chariot, with the golden bullocks emblazoned on the panels, and the flaccid children within.
1879. Froude, Cæsar, xv. 234. Full of wine, and sleep, and fornication, his hair moist, his eyes heavy, his cheeks flaccid.
b. Of vegetable organs and tissues: Bending without elasticity, also, relaxed from want of moisture; drooping.
1616. Bacon, Sylva, § 493. The Part against which the Sunne beateth, waxeth more faint and flaccide in the Stalke; And thereby lesse able to support the Flower.
1776. Withering, Brit. Plants (1796), II. 233. Stem flaccid, rough with strong hairs.
1875. Darwin, Insectiv. Pl., ix. 226. The leaf being flaccid and apparently dead.
1882. Vines, Sachs’ Bot., 675. The current of water also ceases as soon as the tissues which have become somewhat flaccid are again turgescent.
2. Of immaterial things: Wanting vigour and nervous energy, limp, feeble.
1647. H. More, Song of Soul, II. i. II. xli.
| What’s dead or uselesse, lesse demonstrative, | |
| What’s dull or flaccid, nought illustrative. |
1855. Tennyson, Maud, I. i. 20.
| But that old man, now lord of the broad estate and the Hall, | |
| Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left us flaccid and drain’d. |
1875. Farrar, Silence & V., viii. 140. If a boy succeeds in nothing, is poor in work, and poor in games, lets slip all his opportunities one after another,—depend upon it this is because his resolutions have been feeble, and his purposes flaccid, and his habits listless, and his will infirm; because, in a word, there has been no iron in him, but only wood and straw.
Hence Flaccidly adv., in a flaccid manner; Flaccidness, the state of being flaccid, flaccidity.
1727. Bailey, vol. II., Flaccidness.
1847. Craig, Flaccidly.
1876. trans. Wagner’s Gen. Pathol., 238. Anasarca appears less sometimes before death on account of the collapse of the agony, because in the flaccidness of the tissues it sinks into the deeper parts.
1883. Miss Broughton, Belinda, I. I. xii. 218. Belinda has thrown herself flaccidly into a chair.
