melancholy

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   characterized by or causing or expressing sadness

   growing more melancholy every hour

2. 2
   noun

   Black bile, formerly thought to be one of the four "cardinal humours" of animal bodies.

   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.

3. 3
   noun

   Great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.

   My mind was troubled with deep melancholy.

4. 4
   adj

   Affected with great sadness or depression.

   Melancholy people don't talk much.

5. 5
   adj

   Suggestive of wistfulness or subdued emotion.

   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.

6. 6
   adj

   grave or even gloomy in character

7. 7
   noun

   a humor that was once believed to be secreted by the kidneys or spleen and to cause sadness and melancholy

8. 8
   noun

   a feeling of thoughtful sadness

Etymology

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.