English

Valentino Summers

18 September, 08:48

Excerpt from Walden

Henry David Thoreau

They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself.

One day, when my axe had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I staid there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had no yet fairly come out of the torpid state.

What does the word "torpid" mean as used in this passage?

A) lazy or slow to move

B) indolent or inactive

C) sluggish or apathetic

D) dormant; as in hibernating