Lisa would call it Velleity, but none of us knew what that meant.

The Times used 'velleity' in the sense of "a slight wish not followed by any effort to obtain" an outcome."

Kathy Kolbe also lists velleity as a "key concept of conation."

Several prominent writers, philosophers, and psychologists have discussed the usefulness of the concept of "velleity".

Bill Bryson uses velleity as a perfect example of "words [that] deserve to be better known."

Boston band Prickly covered the song on their 1997 LP Velleity.

The spontaneity even of the most transient whim or velleity never ceases to pull towards or away from awareness.

In criminal law, an inchoate offense, such as crime of attempt, must start with some velleity, but needs to rise beyond that level of mere intent.

In philosophy, velleity represents the "capacity of alternative choice" - or the "possibility of alternative choice thereto".

Psychologist Avi Sion writes, "Many psychological concepts may only be defined and explained with reference to velleity."

He suggested that it might be accounted for by "a false sensation or seeming experience" (a velleity), which is associated with many of our actions when we perform them.

Keith David Wyma refers frequently to the "concept of velleity", citing Thomas Aquinas as a pioneer of introducing the idea into philosophy.

The only band ever to include the word "velleity" in a song title, June of 44 mixes the knotty structures and artless vocals of collegiate rock with jazz touches.

An example he cites is that "an ordinarily desirable object can only properly be called 'interesting' or 'tempting' to that agent at that time, if he manifests some velleity...."

Thomas Pynchon, in Gravity's Rainbow, described "[t]his connoisseuse of 'splendid weaknesses', run not by any lust or even velleity but by vacuum: by the absence of human hope".

Ask on Argosy Street at the sign of the BLIND SHOVEL Or inquire at the Alticamelus around the corner on Velleity.

And what other nautical writer casually lets drop words like velleity (which most yachtsmen haven't run across since first looking into T. S. Eliot at age 20), or contemplates the possibility that a crew member may be afflicted with "creeping acedia?"

As Mr. Woodward reports it, General Powell's preference for a policy of "containment" or "strangulation," as he liked to think of it, strikes the reader more as a velleity than a hardened position in the general's mind.

On these occasions the confessor must help evoke not some mere velleity to do away with sin, as Nadal believed so often happened, but a fervent and confirmed desire to begin a new life and "put on a new soul."

The difficulty of getting here prevented people from coming on a velleity, and the eternal presence of these people- like starlings peering down hungrily at a picnic- reminded everyone who was lucky enough to have a job that others were waiting to take their place.

They may have coveted your silver - I am sure they did - but that was a mere passing velleity compared with their yearning for Mr Hadley's double-handed saws, adzes, jack-screws and many other bright steel objects I cannot name.'

If I understand him - and frequently I do not - national service, morphologically speaking, is apodictically not a mere millenarian velleity or synecdoche exiguously reified as antinomian meliorism by exogenous Ortega y Gasset epigones with their conflated burins.

A person could thus have "double velleity" or "a mix of velleity for something and a volition for its opposite: the latter dominates, of course, but that does not erase the fact of velleity."

Roosevelt, who worked for several law firms before becoming an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, knows his subject, but he can't seem to stop himself from using SAT words that few readers will understand without a dictionary ("lagniappe," "susurrus," "velleity").

He distinguishes between the two types of velleity - "to do something and one not to do something...." Furthermore, he asserts, "The concept of velleity is also important because it enables us to understand the co-existence of conflicting values."