[f. FLACCID a. + -ITY. Cf. F. flaccidité.]
1. The quality or condition of being flaccid; want of stiffness or tension, limpness, looseness.
1676. Wiseman, Surgery, VI. ii. 444. If it be from Interception of the Spirits by reason of over-strict Bandage, there is neither Fluxion nor Pain, but Flaccidity joyned with an Insensibility in the Part.
1725. Cheyne, Ess. Health vii. 173. The Viscidity of the Juices, and the Flaccidity of the Fibres, would … be removed.
1800. Young, in Phil. Trans., XCI. 62. The flaccidity of the eye after death might render such a change very easy as would be impossible in a living eye.
1882. Vines, Sachs’ Bot., 689. So long as no actually perceptible amount of flaccidity, i.e. of withering, caused by the collapse of the cells, takes place when the transpiration is stronger and the absorption weaker.
b. Of immaterial things: Want of firmness and vigour; limpness, flabbiness.
1778. Bp. Lowth, Isaiah, Dissert., liii. The Prophet would express the drowsiness and flaccidity, the slothfulness and want of spirit, of his countrymen.
1806–7. J. Beresford, Miseries Hum. Life (1826), II. xvi. The flaccidity of mind with which you attempt to flog yourself up into an inclination to work in your garden, for the sake of exercise.
1875. Lightfoot, Comm. Col. (ed. 2), 124. A vagueness, a flaccidity, of conception betrays itself in their language.
2. Used to render It. flaccidezza, Fr. flacherie: A disease of silkworms.
18[?]. Riley, Silk-Culture, 36 (Cent. Dict.). The worms are attacked by flaccidity.
