means The state of being inactive, unoccupied, or doing no work, whether by choice or circumstance.

from From Old English idel, meaning 'empty, void, useless, worthless' — the same root that gives us 'idle.' The original sense leaned hard on the 'empty' side: an idle field was one lying fallow, an idle word one with no substance behind it. Over time the emptiness shifted from things to people, and idleness came to name not just a vacant state but the human habit of doing nothing. It's a cousin of the Dutch ijdel and German eitel, both carrying that same flavor of 'vain' or 'empty.'