Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A mental disorder characterized by severe depression, guilt, hopelessness, and withdrawal.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. In pathology, a mental condition characterized by great depression combined with a sluggishness and apparent painfulness of mental action. Melancholia may or may not exhibit paroxysms of violent behavior, and there may or may not be delusions.
- n. Same as melancholy, 2.
Wiktionary
- n. Deep sadness or gloom; melancholy
- n. Clinical depression, characterised by irrational fears, guilt and apathy
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. (Med.) A kind of mental unsoundness characterized by extreme depression of spirits, ill-grounded fears, delusions, and brooding over one particular subject or train of ideas.
WordNet 3.0
- n. extreme depression characterized by tearful sadness and irrational fears
Etymologies
- Late Latin, melancholy; see melancholy. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“At least since the twelfth century, the term melancholia has been used to identify depressive illness.”
Simon & Schuster: The Neuropsychiatric Guide to Modern Everyday Psychiatry
“Since the seventeenth century, the term melancholia has been used to in a stricter, modern meaning.”
Simon & Schuster: The Neuropsychiatric Guide to Modern Everyday Psychiatry
“They're not for our benefit after all: the pleasure we get from them, the sweeter form of melancholia, is a bonus.”
“That phrase is so closely associated with the legendary prime minister that one assumes he coined it, but he probably got the term from his childhood nanny, and it shows up as a euphemism for melancholia all the way back to the writings of Dr. Samuel Johnson .”
The Washington Post: Book World: 'Mr. Chartwell' reviewed by Ron Charles
“Louis Bayard on Against Happiness by Eric G. Wilson: Wilson's idea of melancholia is thoroughly Romantic and more than a little romantic.”
An Amazon.com Books Blog featuring news, reviews, interviews and guest author blogs.
“Freud famously argues apropos of the processes of identification involved in melancholia that 'the shadow of the object falls on the ego.”
The Ordinary Sky: Wordsworth, Blanchot, and the Writing of Disaster
“Whereas in melancholia the ego is vampirized by the introjected object, in mania the libido turns with ravenous hunger to the external world of objects; whatever appears before the manic's rapidly advancing probe is swallowed.”
'Pleasure is now, and ought to be, your business': Stealing Sexuality in Jane Austen's _Juvenilia_
“Anyway, melancholia is part of the Christmas spirit.”
“Fink’s melancholia, in other words, is a disease in the modern sense—a form of suffering with a specific biochemical signature.”
“Porpora’s belief that he resurrected the international fame of Poe, that master of mystery and melancholia, is questioned by some Poe scholars.”
Man Reveals Legend of Mystery Visitor to Edgar Allan Poe’s Grave | Impact Lab
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘melancholia’.
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Lolita
Marat, diaphanous, stolid, inveigle, moll, domicile, pugilist, indigent, corpulent, erudite, coruscate, ameliorate and 16 more...
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jan_21
magoosh listens
infuriating, galvanize, sporadic, imperciptible, shirk, protean, versatile, auspicious, clairvoyance, nary, predilection, inkling and 63 more...
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maygra
apropos, advantageous, perception, discombobulated, adumbrate, apogee, perihelion, mortmain, solitudinous, mediastinus, asumbrative, traveler and 498 more...
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parody's Words
defenestrate, behemoth, floss, macchiato, glom, emu, alpaca, crocheted, ampersand, charade, conflate, salacious and 193 more...
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adrift's Words
alluvial, motley, amygdala, skein, echo, lucent, evening, clasp, weft, ruinous, waver, eave and 122 more...
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Valse's Words
fastidious, fervent, bellicose, personification, onomatopoeia, burly, concomitant, tempura, serendipity, pecuniary, foment, chum and 418 more...
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precious
coin, waiflike, zoo, captain, difference, diet, automagical, olive, noanoa, dusk, cookie, monday and 221 more...
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Aliisza's Words
peculiar, syndactyly, efficacy, transcendent, visceral, antagonist, plausible, velocity, seraphim, vanadium, autophobia, evanescent and 86 more...
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GRE Words
whimsical, loquacious, garrulous, curmudgeon, polemical, contempt, scorn, parsimony, torment, colossus, panegyrist, panegyric and 58 more...
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mood
doldrums, disenchanted, derisive, dour, knackered, vex, peevish, grumpy, spurious, fractious, acrimonious, cross and 28 more...
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somewhat interesting
words I find interesting but don't neccessarily like
juxtapose, capacitor, akimbo, leviathan, sporadic, melancholia, blitz, kami, erstwhile, speculation, vexed
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Thought-Provoking
actuality, existence, being, ens, essence, quintessence, existential, metacognition, atychiphobia, cryptomnesia, melancholia, darkness and 8 more...
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Balsamic's Words
vignette, itinerant, maladies, hagiographic, dour, ethereal, credence, solemnity, provenance, vestigial, dissonance, melancholia and 221 more...
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Superfluoshu -1
wrangle, plurality, ersatz, dongle, melancholia, mephistophelian, wurlitzer, mangonel, weeaboo, non-euclidean, chunder, whosawhatsit and 4 more...
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Amysue's Words
melancholia, serendipity, insulin, syringe, lancet, neuropathy, totem, stealth, forsooth, folk, gadzooks, zeus and 5 more...
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refined_rilo's Words
atmospheric, winsome, turpitude, lackadaisical, callipygian, ambivalent, sloth, ineptitude, delirium, melancholia, hussy, hookerbot and 47 more...
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