How to Use indolent in a Sentence

indolent

adjective
  • She is indolent and irresponsible.
  • In fact, many people harbor indolent forms of cancer that do not actually pose a risk to their health.
    — Christie Aschwanden, Wired, 10 Jan. 2020
  • Some cancers behave just the opposite of these slow-growing, indolent ones.
    — Christie Aschwanden, Discover Magazine, 10 Feb. 2012
  • Summer's too short and its mood is too indolent to make this into a to-do list, but here are some ways to intensify your summer.
    — Polly Campbell, Cincinnati.com, 13 June 2019
  • Suddenly, indolent cells become cancers that spread and kill.
    — Gina Kolata, New York Times, 16 Jan. 2018
  • And at the epicenter of the country’s violent upheaval is the indolent cow.
    — Amar Diwakar, New Republic, 26 July 2017
  • Regular prostate cancer varies from a slow-growing, indolent form that is easy to treat in its early stages to a much more aggressive form.
    — Dr. Keith Roach, oregonlive, 18 July 2023
  • When Pinkerton is not in a scene, the singer who plays him often hovers to the side, gesturing and twitching in an indolent trance.
    — Alex Ross, The New Yorker, 23 Oct. 2023
  • For example, some work suggests that these cancers are more indolent, meaning slow to spread, than bladder cancers in older adults.
    — Markham Heid, Time, 15 Nov. 2022
  • No, rest is for the lazy, the Caucasian adolescent, the indolent, the indulgent—until the age of thirty.
    — Taiye Selasi, New Yorker, 31 May 2026
  • Also, small, indolent prostate cancer is extremely common as men age, but rarely advances to serious disease.
    — Arthur L. Kellermann, Forbes.com, 21 May 2025
  • Overdiagnosis is what happens when a mammogram finds an indolent cancer.
    — Christie Aschwanden, Discover Magazine, 10 Feb. 2012
  • The disease can be indolent, which spreads slowly with few signs and symptoms, or aggressive, which spreads quickly with severe symptoms, the institute said.
    — Madeline Holcombe, CNN, 16 Jan. 2020
  • The Northern League once derided southern Italians as smelly, shifty and indolent.
    — Michael Birnbaum, Washington Post, 6 Mar. 2018
  • Indeed, this was one of Alexis de Tocqueville’s many criticisms of the indolent slavers of the Old South.
    — Cameron Hilditch, National Review, 29 May 2021
  • Kemp also worries about the cascading effects of having an indolent United States in treaty meetings.
    — Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic, 30 May 2017
  • The story’s indolent pacing brings into clear focus moments of cruelty and betrayal.
    — The Atlantic, 28 June 2019
  • Tom is too indolent either to build a fortune, as Bankman-Fried did, or to embrace the philosophy on which he was raised, as Bankman-Fried did.
    — Timothy Noah, The New Republic, 16 Dec. 2022
  • Trump, after all, is an essentially weak and personally indolent president, unfamiliar with how the levers of power work.
    — Dan McLaughlin, National Review, 18 Aug. 2020
  • When an insecure yet ambitious regime attempts to carry out large-scale social transformation, the indolent bureaucrat makes for an ideal scapegoat.
    — Charlie Tyson, The New Yorker, 15 Mar. 2025
  • The portrayal of federal workers as lazy and indolent continues to be a central aspect of the president’s plans to slash government employment.
    — Stephen Engelberg, ProPublica, 24 Feb. 2025
  • The myth of the happy, docile, and emotionally indolent slave is historical tripe originally propagated by those who trafficked in human bondage.
    — Phillip Morris, cleveland.com, 9 May 2018
  • The goal of prostate cancer screening is to identify and treat the aggressive prostate cancers, while not unnecessarily treating the slow-growing, indolent cancers.
    — Dr. Keith Roach, oregonlive, 6 Sep. 2023
  • Bankers and financiers always had a somewhat dark reputation as swindlers, but technologists reframed them as indolent parasites who made nothing and preyed upon the inventions of others.
    — Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 4 Feb. 2022
  • Granted, not all who have been reluctant to return to work--at least while the checks keep coming--are necessarily indolent, but many seem to be and that is a bad condition to encourage in an individual and a nation.
    — Arkansas Online, 2 July 2021
  • This form of direct democracy was intended to allow voters to become the lawmakers of last resort when their representatives proved to be indolent, incompetent or corrupt.
    — Jon Coupal, Orange County Register, 10 June 2017
  • Bankman-Fried, by his own admission, became similarly indolent in managing FTX.
    — Timothy Noah, The New Republic, 16 Dec. 2022
  • That’s why one of the important warning signs of nitrogen deficiency is yellowing, pale green leaves—especially if this chlorosis develops in the oldest leaves—and indolent plant growth despite fine weather.
    — Beth Hanson, Good Housekeeping, 24 Aug. 2015
  • What had been indolent and slow growing has suddenly become aggressive, attacking an organ that has been unaffected since his diagnosis in 2012.
    — Paul Sisson, sandiegouniontribune.com, 26 May 2017
  • Among men with an elevated PSA who are found on biopsy to have cancer, about 80 percent have an indolent form of the disease that is highly unlikely to become life-threatening.
    — New York Times, 24 Feb. 2020

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'indolent.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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