Have you ever felt so tired and sluggish you collapsed in a chair and could barely summon the will power to stand up? If so, you were feeling LETHARGIC – a feeling of great sluggishness accompanied by a lack of energy and enthusiasm.
LETHARGIC is now officially a member of our Double Trouble words. SAT test writers first introduced the word in March 2026 and just recycled the question in September 2026. The passage features a very dry and truthfully very tedious discussion of so-called “slow-cinema films” that are deliberately designed to be boring and thus induce a feeling of LETHARGY in the audience. It is possible that the figure in today’s picture watched one of these films!
The LETHARGIC film passage also contains several additional vocabulary words. The MEASURED or deliberately restrained pace of these “slow-cinema films” often causes a sense of TORPOR or great sluggishness. Tempting wrong answers include PERTURBATION (a feeling of great anxiety) and INDIFFERENCE (a complete lack of interest).
Here’s my best advice for students preparing for the next SAT. Get a good night’s sleep. This will prevent you from feeling LETHARGIC as you read the test’s deliberately boring passages!
LETHARGIC – a feeling of great sluggishness accompanied by a lack of energy and enthusiasm.
Bonus point: Mr. Chmiel’s FJCA students never feel LETHARGIC during his APUSH lessons. His dynamic presentations and thought-provoking questions are the antithesis of the measured pace of slow-cinema films!