melancholic
/mˌɛlənkˈɑlɪk/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.75 in modern English
20
Scrabble Score
11
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Filled with or affected by melancholy—great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.
adj
Pertaining to the melancholic temperament or its associated personality traits.
noun
A person who is habitually melancholy.
Example Sentences
- "Just as the melancholic eye / Sees fleets and armies in the sky."
- "But he was also a natural chronicler: one senses that, even as his schemes collapsed, this aesthetic Arab Quixote knew the stories would make great material for his witty, sharp, melancholic writings."
- "Kafka, Hart Crane, Jackson Pollock, Tennessee Williams, Mark Rothko, melancholics all, so why shouldn’t we accept our own bleakness and take long walks in the winter woods and look at the gnarled limbs of trees and struggle with the inscrutable and accept the beauty of permanent turmoil?"
Etymology
From Latin melancholicus, from Ancient Greek μελαγχολικός (melankholikós, “atrabilious, impulsive, of atrabilious or melancholic temperament”), from μελαγχολία (melankholía, “melancholy”). By surface analysis, melancholy + -ic.
Origin
- Source language: Latin
Word Breakdown
- Root: melancholicus, μελαγχολικός
Usage
Inflected Forms
more melancholic (comparative)
most melancholic (superlative)
melancholick (alternative, obsolete)
melancholicke (alternative, obsolete)
melancholike (alternative, obsolete)
melancholics (plural)