melancholy - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

From Middle English malencolie, from Old French melancolie, from Ancient Greek μελαγχολία (melankholía, “atrabiliousness”) (from μέλας (mélas), μελαν- (melan-, “black, dark, murky”) + χολή (kholḗ, “bile”)), referring to the humour which ancient Hippocratic and later Galenic medicine associated with sadness and despondency. Compare the Latin ātra bīlis (“black bile”). The adjectival use is a Middle English innovation, perhaps influenced by the suffixes -y, -ly. Doublet of melancholia.

melancholy (countable and uncountable, plural melancholies)

  1. (historical) Black bile, formerly thought to be one of the four "cardinal humours" of animal bodies.
    • , Bk.I, New York 2001, p.148:
      Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black, and sour, […] is a bridle to the other two hot humours, blood and choler, preserving them in the blood, and nourishing the bones.
  2. Great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.
    Synonyms: despondency, misery; see also Thesaurus:sadness
    • 1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], line 34:
      My mind was troubled with deep melancholy.
    • c. 1598–1600 (date written), William Shakespeare, “As You Like It”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:
      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 politic; 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.
    • 1831, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter VI, in Romance and Reality. […], volume III, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, page 111:
      "The ancients referred melancholy to the mind, the moderns make it matter of digestion—to either case my plan applies," said Lady Mandeville.
    • 1936 Sept. 15, F. Scott Fitzgerald, letter to Beatrice Dance:
      As to Ernest... He is quite as nervously broken down as I am but it manifests itself in different ways. His inclination is towards megalomania and mine towards melancholy.

Sadness or depression

melancholy (comparative more melancholy, superlative most melancholy)

  1. (literary) Affected with great sadness or depression.
    Synonyms: melancholic; see also Thesaurus:sad, Thesaurus:cheerless
    Melancholy people don't talk much.
  2. Suggestive of wistfulness or subdued emotion.
    • 1869, Alfred Russel Wallace, The Malay Archipelago, volume I, London: Macmillan and Co., page 356:
      Twice a day she took them out to feed in the marshy places, let them waddle and gobble for an hour or two, and then drove them back and shut them up in a small dark shed to digest their meal, whence they gave forth occasionally a melancholy quack.