Listless means without energy or interest in anything. Feel listless, a listless performance, listless and pale.
It is a symptom as much as a mood, and doctors ask about it because it accompanies illness, low iron and depression. Of a performance it means flat. The list in it is an old word meaning desire or inclination — being listless is having no wish for anything, which is exactly the feeling.
1adjectivelistlessWithout energy or interest in anything.
“The heat made everyone listless, and nobody wanted to leave the shade.”
listless is a state of low energy.
Middle English lystles is list, meaning desire, plus -less. German lustlos is the same compound.
Middle English
lystles
English, today
listless
From Middle English lystles. From Middle English lystles, equivalent to list + less. Compare German lustlos and Dutch lusteloos (“lethargic, listless”). a doublet of lustless.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA