ataraxy

plural ataraxies

1. uncountableusuallyhuman sciencesAtaraxia; freedom from mental disturbance; imperturbability, dogged indifference.

   There was no longer any need for fortitude: he felt nothing at present and there was no point in artificial ataraxy.

   1973, Patrick O'Brian, HMS Surprise

   3 more examples

   When the Pyrrhonians say, that ataraxy is the chiefe felicitie, which is the immobilitie of judgement, their meaning is not to speake it affirmatively[…].

   1603, Michel de Montaigne, chapter 12, in John Florio, transl., The Essayes […], book II, London: […] Val[entine] Simmes for Edward Blount […], →OCLC

   Youth all around prancing, vociferating, mocking; callow and alien youth, having to be looked after and studied and taught, as though nothing but it mattered, term after term—and now, all of a sudden, in mid-term, peace, ataraxy, a profound and leisured stillness.

   1911, Max Beerbohm, chapter 21, in Zuleika Dobson, New York: John Lane, published 1912, page 319

   I was nonplussed, I stared at my teacher, never before had his swollen face seemed so replete with indifference, stone ataraxy.

   1993, Will Self, My Idea Of Fun

2. uncountableusuallypharmacymedicineState of psychological calm and tranquility, absence of discomfort, or metabolical inactivity.

   Ataraxy can be produced by ataractics, drugs that have a calming or quieting effect.

   2000, M. Basavanna, Dictionary of Psychology, Allied Publishers, →ISBN, page 28