How to Use torpid in a Sentence

torpid

adjective
  • But given the stock’s torpid performance, opening the wallet is a risk that Biogen needs to take.
    — Charley Grant, WSJ, 24 Apr. 2018
  • Free money was great for stock-market investors, but Main Street’s recovery was torpid.
    — Roger Lowenstein, The Atlantic, 16 Jan. 2026
  • That sent torpid old companies like GameStop, the bricks-and-mortar games retailer, on a rocket ride.
    — Los Angeles Times, 2 Feb. 2022
  • Week after week, however, audiences seem torpid rather than tempted when scouting the megaplex offerings.
    — Peter Bart, Deadline, 20 Nov. 2025
  • If the wheels of justice turn slowly, the wheels of legislature follow a crushingly torpid, if sometimes erratic, path.
    — Kyle Wiens and Sina Khanifar, WIRED, 10 July 2014
  • Hamsters, for example, can instead enter a torpid state that actually protects their cells from ageing over winter.
    — Christopher Turbill, CNN, 11 May 2017
  • Investors fear that the world is turning into Japan, with a torpid economy that struggles to vanquish deflation, and is hence prone to going backwards.
    — The Economist, 17 Aug. 2019
  • After a torpid start, Williams recovered from a 2-4 deficit to take the first set and then opened the second set by winning the first 11 points of the second set.
    — Ben Rothenberg, New York Times, 19 Mar. 2016
  • The decision to combine bloody-minded perversity with a torpid tempo is certainly daring.
    — N.b., The Economist, 20 June 2019
  • No matter who replaces him — and a young, ambitious coach to re-energize a torpid club is the order of the day — that person will have to rebuild morale, reshape the squad and restore purpose.
    — Rory Smith, New York Times, 20 Apr. 2018
  • No matter how much my more musically savvy friends tried to point out its greatness, Brahms’ famous choral work has always struck me as a torpid affair with orchestral textures as thick as molasses.
    — Patrick Neas, kansascity, 25 June 2018
  • The former is a torpid scene of two young boys tending a ragged field alongside a bony horse with a US brand on its haunch — picking up the pieces in the immediate aftermath of a nation shattered by war.
    — BostonGlobe.com, 4 Oct. 2019
  • Les Bleus had churned out a pair of workmanlike victories over Australia and Peru before settling for a torpid scoreless draw against Denmark.
    — Joshua Robinson, WSJ, 30 June 2018
  • Not long after a pair of New York real estate speculators founded this city on the banks of a torpid bayou in the 1830s, every home and every business flooded.
    — Manny Fernandez and Richard Fausset, New York Times, 30 Aug. 2017
  • But his previous effort, 2017’s Last Flag Flying, was a dull affair, with an amazing ensemble wasted on a torpid narrative.
    — David Sims, The Atlantic, 16 Aug. 2019
  • Instead, we’re treated to a series of agonizingly torpid scenes in which Nita and her co-workers are incepted by the power of Adam’s fiction, which comes to assume the force of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
    — David Ehrlich, IndieWire, 14 May 2026
  • China’s currency has fallen more than 5% against the dollar this year, with analysts pointing to trade tensions as a major factor behind increasingly torpid economic figures out of Beijing.
    — David Hodari, WSJ, 18 Sep. 2018
  • Thomas and cinematographer Inti Briones know when to push that air of torpid beauty too — the black-and-white imagery is simultaneously past-evocative and languidly atmospheric.
    — Robert Abele, latimes.com, 25 Jan. 2018
  • Klein is probably expected to bring the improved focus on operations needed to deliver the profit goal, and Morgan the cloud experience needed to accelerate the so far torpid adoption of its products in that market.
    — Alex Webb | Bloomberg, Washington Post, 11 Oct. 2019
  • With his current approval ratings topping 80%, he is set to easily win another six-year term in a race against torpid veterans of past election campaigns, like Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov.
    — Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY, 7 Oct. 2017
  • That obviously transformed what, like a previous probe by Cleaning Lady producers Warner Bros TV, had been a rather torpid investigation into something much more urgent.
    — Dominic Patten, Deadline, 14 Jan. 2026
  • Kentucky’s sophomore linebacker reversed the torpid trend of the Wildcats’ season opener Saturday afternoon by forcing a fumble on Toledo’s first play of the third quarter, and then delivering a drive-killing sack on the Rockets’ next possession.
    — Tim Sullivan, The Courier-Journal, 31 Aug. 2019
  • With the market for larger corporate plans particularly torpid, Embraer has resisted offering business versions of the newer E2 family of passenger jets, Amalfitano said.
    — Christopher Jasper, Bloomberg.com, 22 May 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'torpid.' 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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