What is "wistful"

Usage examples of "wistful".

Despite a conservative training--or because of it, for humdrum lives breed wistful longings of the unknown--he swore a great oath to scale that avoided northern cliff and visit the abnormally antique gray cottage in the sky.

Now here Jocelyn sighed amain and, sitting beneath a tree, fell to sad and wistful thinking.

I heard a Zulu war song it sounded to me so wistful and gentle as to suggest a berceuse rather than the advance of a bloodthirsty impi.

Though relieved in a way, by the kindness of the weather, Brod also seemed ambivalently wistful at his narrow escape.

A wistful wondering whether something about Camber might not be supernatural after all.

But Herbert dreaded every instant that Marah Rocke should turn her head and meet that fixed, wistful look of Old Hurricane.

Rather than funny, Tolley found them prim and touchingly pious, almost wistful.

Oh, the passion Jory and Melodic had between them stirred a wistful longing in my own loins.

Han has a wistful look in his eyes as Montross heads back to the cockpit.

She carried the suitcase into the pantry and with only one last wistful glance placed it under a shelf lined with glass jars of sugar.

Street, shot a wistful glance at the enchanted bow-window where the Duke and his usual companions, Sir Lucius, Charles Annesley, and Lord Squib, lounged and laughed, stretched themselves and sneered: many a bright eye, that for a moment pierced the futurity that painted her going in state as Duchess of St.

Growing swiftly conscious of all that in the Purgatory of the Present awaited him, Theos felt as though the earth-chasm that had swallowed up Al-Kyris in his dream had opened again before him, affrighting him with its black depth of nothingness and annihilation,--and in a sudden agony of self-distrust he gazed yearningly at the fair, wistful face above him, .

Their skins are as swarthy as those of Bedaween, their foreheads comparatively low, their eyes far more deeply set their stature lower, their hair yet more abundant, the look of wistful melancholy more marked, and two, who were unclothed for hard work in fashioning a canoe, were almost entirely covered with short, black hair, specially thick on the shoulders and back, and so completely concealing the skin as to reconcile one to the lack of clothing.

And this pity finds expression in wistful sympathy when we think of the quixotic strain in this wrestling with an overwhelming foe, when we see the childlike faith with which the people have grasped at every unplausible hope of rescue from its anguish of death and still grasps at it, as a drowning man grasps at a wisp of straw.

The wistful tone in his voice did him great credit: Most boys of fourteen, faced with the prospect of twelve years of responsibility for a minor sister, would feel more than mild regret.