Word of the Day: Melancholy
PRONUNCIATION: [mel-uhn-kol-ee]
MEANING:
noun: A pensive, gloomy, depressed state. adjective: Having or causing a sad mood.
ETYMOLOGY: From the former belief that a gloomy state was the result of the excess of black bile. From Latin melancholia, from Greek melancholia (the condition of having an excess of black bile), from melan- (black) + chole (bile), ultimately from the Indo-European root ghel- (to shine), which is also the source of words such as yellow, gold, glimmer, gloaming, glimpse, glass, arsenic, and cholera. Earliest documented use: before 1375.
USAGE: The bleakness of winter sometimes gives me cause for melancholy.
SYNONYMS: blue devils, blues, dejection, depression, desolation, despond, despondence, despondency, disconsolateness, dispiritedness, doldrums, dolefulness, downheartedness, dreariness, dumps, forlornness, gloom, gloominess, glumness, heartsickness, joylessness, sadness, miserableness, mopes, mournfulness, oppression, sorrowfulness, unhappiness
ANTONYMS: bliss, blissfulness, ecstasy, elatedness, elation, euphoria, exhilaration, exuberance, exultation, felicity, gladness, gladsomeness, happiness, heaven, intoxication, joy, joyfulness, joyousness, jubilation, rapture, rapturousness
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PRONUNCIATION: [mel-uhn-kol-ee]
noun: A pensive, gloomy, depressed state. adjective: Having or causing a sad mood.
ETYMOLOGY: From the former belief that a gloomy state was the result of the excess of black bile. From Latin melancholia, from Greek melancholia (the condition of having an excess of black bile), from melan- (black) + chole (bile), ultimately from the Indo-European root ghel- (to shine), which is also the source of words such as yellow, gold, glimmer, gloaming, glimpse, glass, arsenic, and cholera. Earliest documented use: before 1375.USAGE: The bleakness of winter sometimes gives me cause for melancholy.
SYNONYMS: blue devils, blues, dejection, depression, desolation, despond, despondence, despondency, disconsolateness, dispiritedness, doldrums, dolefulness, downheartedness, dreariness, dumps, forlornness, gloom, gloominess, glumness, heartsickness, joylessness, sadness, miserableness, mopes, mournfulness, oppression, sorrowfulness, unhappiness
ANTONYMS: bliss, blissfulness, ecstasy, elatedness, elation, euphoria, exhilaration, exuberance, exultation, felicity, gladness, gladsomeness, happiness, heaven, intoxication, joy, joyfulness, joyousness, jubilation, rapture, rapturousness
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