languish

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. v. To be or become weak or feeble; lose strength or vigor.
2. v. To exist or continue in miserable or disheartening conditions: languished away in prison.
3. v. To remain unattended or be neglected: legislation that continued to languish in committee.
4. v. To become downcast or pine away in longing: languish apart from friends and family; languish for a change from dull routine.
5. v. To affect a wistful or languid air, especially in order to gain sympathy.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. To become weak or spiritless; become listless or sad; lose strength or animation; pine: as, to languish in solitude.
2. To droop, wither, or fade, as a plant, from heat, drought, neglect, or other unfavorable conditions.
3. To grow feeble or dull; lose activity and vigor; dwindle; fall off: as, the war languished for lack of supplies; manufactures languished.
4. To act languidly; present or assume a languid appearance or expression, especially as an indication of tender or enervating emotion.
5. Synonyms To decliue, faint, fail.
6. To cause to droop or fail.
7. n. The act of declining, drooping, or pining; a languid posture or appearance; languishment.

Wiktionary

1. v. To lose strength and become weak; to be in a state of weakness or sickness. [from 14th c.]
2. v. To pine away in longing for something; to have low spirits, especially from lovesickness. [from 14th c.]
3. v. To live in miserable or disheartening conditions. [from 15th c.]
4. v. To be neglected; to make little progress, be unsuccessful. [from 17th c.]
5. v. To make weak; to weaken, devastate. [15th-17th c.]
6. v. To affect a languid air, especially disingenuously. [from 18th c.]

GNU Webster's 1913

1. v. To become languid or weak; to lose strength or animation; to be or become dull, feeble or spiritless; to pine away; to linger in a weak or deteriorating condition; to wither or fade.
2. v. To assume an expression of weariness or tender grief, appealing for sympathy.
3. v. To be neglected and unattended to.
4. v. To cause to droop or pine.
5. n. See languishment.

WordNet 3.0

1. v. lose vigor, health, or flesh, as through grief
2. v. become feeble
3. v. have a desire for something or someone who is not present