Definitions for melancholy
ˈmɛl ənˌkɒl imelan·cho·ly

Princeton's WordNet(5.00 / 2 votes)Rate this definition:

1. melancholynoun

   a feeling of thoughtful sadness

2. melancholynoun

   a constitutional tendency to be gloomy and depressed

3. black bile, melancholyadjective

   a humor that was once believed to be secreted by the kidneys or spleen and to cause sadness and melancholy

4. melancholy, melancholicadjective

   characterized by or causing or expressing sadness

   "growing more melancholy every hour"; "her melancholic smile"; "we acquainted him with the melancholy truth"

5. somber, sombre, melancholyadjective

   grave or even gloomy in character

   "solemn and mournful music"; "a suit of somber black"; "a somber mood"

Wiktionary(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. melancholynoun

   Black bile, formerly thought to be one of the four "cardinal humours" of animal bodies.

2. melancholynoun

   Great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.

3. melancholyadjective

   Affected with great sadness or depression.

4. Etymology: From μελαγχολία, from μέλας, μελαν- + χολή. Compare the Latin atra bilis.

Samuel Johnson's Dictionary(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. Melancholyadjective

   Etymology: melancolique, French.

   1. Gloomy; dismal.

   Think of all our miseries
   But as some melancholy dream, which has awak’d us
   To the renewing of our joys. John Denham, Sophy.

   If in the melancholy shades below,
   The flames of friends and lovers cease to glow;
   Yet mine shall sacred last, mine undecay’d,
   Burn on through death, and animate my shade. Alexander Pope.

   2. Diseased with melancholy; fanciful; habitually dejected.

   How now, sweet Frank; art thou melancholy. William Shakespeare.

   He observes Lamech more melancholy than usual, and imagines it to be from a suspicion he has of his wife Adah, whom he loved. John Locke.

2. MELANCHOLYnoun

   1.A disease, supposed to proceed from a redundance of black bile; but it is better known to arise from too heavy and too viscid blood: its cure is in evacuation, nervous medicines, and powerful stimuli. John Quincy

   Etymology: melancolie, Fr. from μέλανς and χολη.

   2. A kindness of madness, in which the mind is always fixed on one object.

   I have neither the scholar’s melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician’s, which is fantastical; nor the courtier’s, which is proud; nor the soldier’s, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer’s, which is politick; nor the lady’s, which is nice; nor the lover’s, which is all these; but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted from many objects, and, indeed, the sundry contemplation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous sadness. William Shakespeare, As you like it.

   3. A gloomy, pensive, discontented temper.

   He protested unto them, that he had only been to seek solitary places by an extreme melancholy that had possessed him. Philip Sidney, b. ii.

   All these gifts come from him; and if we murmur here, we may at the next melancholy be troubled that God did not make us angels. Jeremy Taylor, holy Living.

   This melancholy flatters, but unmans you;
   What is it else but penury of soul,
   A lazy frost, a numbness of the mind? Dryden.

Webster Dictionary(5.00 / 1 vote)Rate this definition:

1. Melancholynoun

   depression of spirits; a gloomy state continuing a considerable time; deep dejection; gloominess

2. Melancholynoun

   great and continued depression of spirits, amounting to mental unsoundness; melancholia

3. Melancholynoun

   pensive maditation; serious thoughtfulness

4. Melancholynoun

   ill nature

5. Melancholyadjective

   depressed in spirits; dejected; gloomy dismal

6. Melancholyadjective

   producing great evil and grief; causing dejection; calamitous; afflictive; as, a melancholy event

7. Melancholyadjective

   somewhat deranged in mind; having the jugment impaired

8. Melancholyadjective

   favorable to meditation; somber

9. Etymology: [OE. melancolie, F. mlancolie, L. melancholia, fr. Gr. ; me`las, me`lanos, black + gall, bile. See Malice, and 1st Gall.]

Chambers 20th Century Dictionary(4.00 / 1 vote)Rate this definition:

1. Melancholy

   mel′an-kol-i, n. continued depression of spirits: dejection: a gloomy state of mind causing groundless fears: (Milt.) pensiveness.—adj. gloomy: producing grief.—n. Melanchō′lia, a form of insanity, in which there is continued depression or pain of mind.—adjs. Melanchol′ic, Melanchō′lious, affected with, or caused by, melancholy: dejected: mournful. [Through Fr.,—L.,—Gr. melancholia—melan, black, cholē, bile.]

Editors Contribution(0.00 / 0 votes)Rate this definition:

1. melancholy

   You describe something that you see or hear as melancholy when it gives you an intense feeling of sadness. If someone feels or looks melancholy, they feel or look very sad.sadness that lasts for a long period of time, often without any obvious reason.feeling or expressing sadness;a feeling of sadness and of being without hope;Sadness and unhappiness,depression,grief;A feeling or spell of dismally low spirits:blues, dejection, despondence, despondency, doldrums, dolefulness, downheartedness, dumps, dysphoria, funk, gloom, glumness, heavy-heartedness, mope (used in plural), mournfulness,unhappiness.In low spirits:blue,depressed, desolate, dispirited, down, downcast, downhearted, dull, dysphoric, gloomy, heavy-hearted, low, melancholic,spiritless, tristful, unhappy, wistful.suggestive or expressive of sadness or depression of mind or spirit; causing or tending to cause sadness or depression of mind or spirit : DISMAL; depressed in spirits : DEJECTED, SAD;blue devils,desolation, despond,disconsolateness, dispiritedness,dreariness, down in the dumps (informal), forlornness,gloominess, heartsickness, joylessness, miserableness, mopes,oppression,sorrowfulness;Idiom: down at the mouth.Tending to cause sadness or low spirits:blue, cheerless, depressing,dispiriting,joyless,down,miserable, moody,sombre, woeful, glum, mournful,despondent,lugubrious, pensive, sorrowful, disconsolate,doleful, heavy-hearted, woebegone, down in the mouth, low-spirited depression, misery,sorrow, woe, the hump (Brit. informal),low spirits,pensiveness,a gloomy state of mind, especially when habitual or prolonged;sober thoughtfulness;affected with, characterized by, or showing melancholy;depressed,causing melancholy or sadness; saddening;soberly thoughtful;Great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.

   Somber and laconic can be eliminated right away—there are too many exclamation points for the work to be melancholy and laid back in the way those words suggest.

   
   

   Submitted by anonymous on June 14, 2020  

Matched Categories

1. • Depression
   • Sadness

How to pronounce melancholy?

1. Alex

   US English

   David

   US English

   Mark

   US English

   Daniel

   British

   Libby

   British

   Mia

   British

   Karen

   Australian

   Hayley

   Australian

   Natasha

   Australian

   Veena

   Indian

   Priya

   Indian

   Neerja

   Indian

   Zira

   US English

   Oliver

   British

   Wendy

   British

   Fred

   US English

   Tessa

   South African

How to say melancholy in sign language?

Numerology

1. Chaldean Numerology

   The numerical value of melancholy in Chaldean Numerology is: 1

2. Pythagorean Numerology

   The numerical value of melancholy in Pythagorean Numerology is: 9

Examples of melancholy in a Sentence

1. James Russell Lowell:

   They talk about their Pilgrim blood, Their birthright high and holy A mountain-stream that ends in mud Methinks is melancholy.

2. Townes Van Zandt:

   I don't know why I write really depressing songs. I'm a kind of melancholy guy, I suppose. But I figure I'm about normal.

3. Henry van Dyke:

   Who can explain the secret pathos of Nature's loveliness? It is a touch of melancholy inherited from our mother Eve. It is an unconscious memory of the lost Paradise. It is the sense that even if we should find another Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it perfectly nor stay in it forever.

4. Martin Clayton:

   This drawing shows a certain wistfulness I think, a certain melancholy even, it's not Leonardo, the great philosopher gazing into the distance. It's a flesh and blood man at the end of a career that had achieved a great deal, but also maybe failed to achieve a great deal as well.

5. Anatole France:

   All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves we must die to one life before we can enter another.

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