Crossword clues for melancholy
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Melancholy \Mel"an*chol*y\, a.
Depressed in spirits; dejected; gloomy dismal.
--Shak.Producing great evil and grief; causing dejection; calamitous; afflictive; as, a melancholy event.
Somewhat deranged in mind; having the jugment impaired. [Obs.]
--Bp. Reynolds.-
Favorable to meditation; somber.
A pretty, melancholy seat, well wooded and watered.
--Evelin.Syn: Gloomy; sad; dispirited; low-spirited; downhearted; unhappy; hypochondriac; disconsolate; heavy, doleful; dismal; calamitous; afflictive.
Melancholy \Mel"an*chol*y\, n. [OE. melancolie, F. m['e]lancolie, L. melancholia, fr. Gr. ?; me`las, me`lanos, black + ? gall, bile. See Malice, and 1st Gall.]
Depression of spirits; a gloomy state continuing a considerable time; deep dejection; gloominess.
--Shak.Great and continued depression of spirits, amounting to mental unsoundness; melancholia.
Pensive maditation; serious thoughtfulness. [Obs.] ``Hail, divinest Melancholy !''
--Milton.Ill nature. [Obs.]
--Chaucer.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
c.1300, "condition characterized by sullenness, gloom, irritability," from Old French melancolie "black bile, ill disposition, anger, annoyance" (13c.), from Late Latin melancholia, from Greek melankholia "sadness," literally (excess of) "black bile," from melas (genitive melanos) "black" (see melanin) + khole "bile" (see Chloe). Medieval physiology attributed depression to excess of "black bile," a secretion of the spleen and one of the body's four "humors."\n
\nThe Latin word also is the source of Spanish melancolia, Italian melancolia, German Melancholie, Danish melankoli, etc. Old French variant malencolie (also in Middle English) is by false association with mal "sickness."
late 14c., "with or caused by black bile; sullen, gloomy, sad," from melancholy (n.); sense of "deplorable" (of a fact or state of things) is from 1710.
Wiktionary
a. Affected with great sadness or depression. n. 1 (context historical English) black bile, formerly thought to be one of the four "cardinal humours" of animal bodies. 2 Great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.
WordNet
adj. characterized by or causing or expressing sadness; "growing more melancholy every hour"; "her melancholic smile"; "we acquainted him with the melancholy truth" [syn: melancholic]
n. a feeling of thoughtful sadness
a constitutional tendency to be gloomy and depressed
a humor that was once believed to be secreted by the kidneys or spleen and to cause sadness and melancholy [syn: black bile]
Wikipedia
Melancholy, original title Melancholia I, is a 1995 novel by the Norwegian writer Jon Fosse. It is about the Norwegian painter Lars Hertervig (1830–1902) and his time as a young student in Düsseldorf, where he, agonised by unrequited love and doubt in his art, is driven toward a mental breakdown.
The book was awarded the Melsom Prize and the Sunnmøre Prize. It was followed by a 1996 sequel, Melancholy II, which is set on the day of Hertervig's death. The first part of Melancholy I was the basis for Georg Friedrich Haas' 2008 opera Melancholia.
Melancholy is a live album by Cecil Taylor's Workshop Ensemble featuring Evan Parker, Barry Guy and Tony Oxley recorded on September 30, 1990 at the Bechstein Concert Hall in Berlin and released on the FMP label.
The Allmusic review by Steven Loewy states "Taylor is unquestionably more effective as an arranger in the small group (and solo) contexts to which he is accustomed. With the ensemble, there is a sense that ideas are not always fully realized, although, to be sure, there are remarkable moments throughout. Whether charges of incomplete or confusing rehearsals are accurate is immaterial. What matters is that the results, while good, probably could have been better. Regardless, Taylor aficionados will want to own this one because of the players in the band and because of the extraordinary moments".
Melancholy may refer to:
- Melancholia, one of the four temperaments in pre-modern medicine and proto-psychology, representing a state of low mood
- Depression (mood), a state of low mood, also known as melancholy
- Major depressive disorder, a mood disorder historically called melancholy
- Melancholy (album), a 1999 live free jazz album by Cecil Taylor's Workshop Ensemble
- The Melancholy E.P., a 1999 EP by American heavy metal band Iced Earth containing the song "Melancholy (Holy Martyr)"
- Melancholy (Edvard Munch), an 1893 painting by Edvard Munch
- Melancholy (novel), a 1995 novel by Jon Fosse
Melancholy (Norwegian: Melankoli ; also known as Jappe on the Beach, Jealousy or Evening) is a painting by the Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch. Munch painted multiple variant versions of the expressionist work in oil on canvas during the period 1891–93. The painting depicts a man with his head resting in his hand in a pensive mood at the edge of a shoreline.
The inspiration for the painting was an unhappy romantic affair that Munch's friend, Jappe Nilssen, was involved in. In Munch's painting the figure of the melancholy man is at the right, and his mood is represented by the undulating shoreline and skylines that extend toward the left. Critics suggest that there are also erotic allusions, perhaps in the presence of the moon reflected on the water. The landscape represents Asgardstrand's beach where Munch spent his summers from 1889.
Melancholy was exhibited in 1891 at the Autumn Exhibition in Oslo. The artist and journalist Christian Krohg credited it as the first Symbolist painting by a Norwegian artist. Munch painted more than one version of the composition in 1891. A version completed in 1892–93 is in the National Gallery, Oslo.
Usage examples of "melancholy".
Noble grief there is in him, and noble melancholy can come upon him, but acquiescence is his last word.
And, worse, she had betrayed most melancholy signs of sourness and agedness as soon as he had sworn himself to her fast and fixed.
Fathom, believing that now was the season for working upon her passions, while they were all in commotion, became, if possible, more assiduous than ever about the fair mourner, modelled his features into a melancholy cast, pretended to share her distress with the most emphatic sympathy, and endeavoured to keep her resentment glowing by cunning insinuations, which, though apparently designed to apologise for his friend, served only to aggravate the guilt of his perfidy and dishonour.
He spotted three men in lederhosen lean over to blow on alpenhorns, sending their melancholy mooing out over the valley.
The eyes were dark but vacant, and the face had no other expression than that look of apathetic melancholy which one sometimes sees on the faces of captive beasts.
Its fresh root is bitter, and a milky juice flows from the rind, which is somewhat aperient and slightly sedative, so that this specially suits persons troubled with bilious torpor, and jaundice combined with melancholy.
With a kind of tolerant pity, she lifted the aspidistras from their containing pots and gathered them into a melancholy little group on the floor, together with a repellent little cactus like an over-stuffed pincushion and a young rubber-plant.
This most ludicrous exhibition of the aweful, melancholy, and venerable Johnson, happened well to counteract the feelings of sadness which I used to experience when parting with him for a considerable time.
You may judge how melancholy our position would have been if we had been beaten by Rommel, and if the Caucasus, the Baku oil-wells, and Persia had been overrun by the enemy.
The Baptist smiled, but his face bore the same trace of melancholy which John had noted as they trekked up the mountainside.
My dear Dubois, who began to love me because I made her happy, felt my melancholy react on herself, and tried to make me talk.
However, the situation assumed a melancholy aspect, for the poor girl began to weep bitterly.
Everybody was melancholy, and seeing that I was the cause I began to talk about England, where I hoped to make my fortune with a project of mine, the success of which only depended on Lord Egremont.
As I was leaving I begged the future Madame Lebel to return me the ring I had given her, and as we had agreed, I presented her with a roll of a hundred Louis, which she took with a melancholy air.
The Anatomy of Melancholy always made him hungry, and he dipped discreetly into various vessels of refreshment, sharing a few scraps with Bock whose pleading brown eye at these secret suppers always showed a comical realization of their shameful and furtive nature.