Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Sullenly melancholy; gloomy.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Fastidious; scrupulous.
- Of a sour temper; severe; sullen and austere.
- Synonyms Gloomy. Sulky, etc. (see sullen), gruff, crabbed, crusty, churlish, surly, ill-humored, ill-natured, cross-grained.
- Lingering; persistent.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Of a sour temper; sullen and austere; ill-humored; severe.
- adj. obsolete Lascivious; brooding over evil thoughts.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. showing a brooding ill humor
Etymologies
- From Latin morosus ("particular, scrupulous, fastidious, self-willed, wayward, capricious, fretful, peevish"), from mos ("way, custom, habit, self-will"): see moral. (Wiktionary)
- Latin mōrōsus, peevish, from mōs, mōr-, self-will, caprice, manner; see mē-1 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Quite lately -- yesterday or the day before -- his mother had spoken to him, gently but very seriously, about what she called the morose and savage fits which would bring misery upon him if he did not set himself earnestly to overcome them.”
“With perhaps the exception of Steven Spielberg's "Munich," which dovetails nicely in morose spirit and disturbing milieu, very few movies about the 1970s (that weren't actually made in the 1970s) look and feel as perfect as "Carlos" does.”
The Washington Post: TV Preview: Sundance Channel's 5 1/2-hour biopic 'Carlos'
“Part of me being all morose is that I am essentially still on bed rest, week two.”
“Instead of the lithe enthusiast with flaming eyes he saw a heavily built man with blunted features, wearing powerful horn spectacles, his expression morose, his movements ungainly.”
“Some one of them giggled, but the remainder regarded her in morose and intense silence.”
“Then Bartlett’s eyes strayed to the opposite end of the defense table where Barney Haskell was sitting, his expression morose, his hands supporting his head.”
“I mean, there's frustration on the album, obviously, and then there's a song like "Crash And Burn," which I wouldn't call morose, but it's certainly a somber song.”
“Durk of the Farlain was known as a morose, solitary man.”
“This morose, meaningless side of science is never openly presented to young students contemplating a lifetime in science.”
The Huffington Post: Dr. Larry Dossey: Is the Universe Merely a Statistical Accident?
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘morose’.
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LIT - Ulysses - key words and phrases
money cowrie, bedraggle, omphalos, ineluctable, postprandial, bladderwrack, modality barnacle..., loofah, shipworm, cither, embattle, Malachi and 503 more...
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sdamle1
echt
echt, apocalypse, resurgence, forthright, logorrhea, mercurial, torrid, exorcise, obscure, intrusive, morose, vindictive and 100 more...
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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GRE Barron's 800
abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abject, abjure, abscission, abscond, abstemious, abstinence, abysmal, accretion and 787 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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501
Classic
aberration, abstruse, anomaly, assiduous, august, banal, boisterous, dulcet, epitome, impudent, insolent, mellifluous and 401 more...
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Verbal_Advantage
paraphrase, ostensible, digress, uncanny, candor, morose, adept, saturated, pragmatic, congenial, capricious, blatant and 38 more...
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The blues
lugubrious, mournful, doleful, plaintive, tremulous, plangent, dyspeptic, morose, poignant, lamenting, lamentation, sad and 8 more...
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M
letters starting with m
mitigate, maudlin, magnanimity, magnanimity, malleable, maverick, maverick, mendacious, metamorphosis, meticulous, misanthrope, mollify and 2 more...
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aykut gre
mossy, intrusive, mettlesome, soliloquy, mocking, dissembler, prevarication, histrionics, aphorism, distinction, concise, pensive and 61 more...
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GRE Reference
A list of words unfamiliar to me that I have repeatedly encountered in GRE question sets.
parochial, clique, salacious, aegis, ostracize, conceited, sacrilegious, inane, serendipity, gourmand, polemic, tenuous and 138 more...
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Twitter favorites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favorite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
unfathomably, glice, cuh, fab, ciggaty, doll, thuggin, oxymoronic, pineapple, succubutt, griming, cheeky and 3063 more... -
Need to Know!
elicit, educe, refute, cogency, churlish, martinet, veritable, polyglot, dissemble, histrionics, prevarication, verbiage and 166 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for morose.
Prolagus Look at this morose motherfucker right here. Looks like somebody shit in his cereal.
(Movie: Chasing Amy) Mar 27, 2008