stodginess

There is none of the usual 'stodginess' of history in his chapters.

Though her feet and hands were small in the extreme, they could not counteract the effect of that betraying stodginess of figure.

If she gave the whole village work, was it too far gone in its unspurred stodginess to be roused to carrying it out?

But it is this very stodginess that makes it, if you love Wordsworth, the perfect book where there can be only one.

In literature we have stodginess in style and decadence in morals, and vers libre, that is to say, no verse at all.