wistful

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He was wistful, asked to see the videos again, heard the "I Love You" clips a couple of times.

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Definitions (7)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (2)

  1. adjective Full of wishful yearning.
  2. adjective Pensively sad; melancholy.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (3)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (1)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (1)

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Examples (50)

  • For those of you who are feeling wistful, the image on this post represents the final screencap of the old site. —  Blogtimore, Hon
  • The book is sometimes wistful, as Buechner gently probes the "what ifs" of his journey, but the primary note he strikes is one of well-aged love. —  Christian Spirituality - BitterSweetLife
  • If this makes you sad and wistful, as it does me, you should go to the —  GreenCine Daily
  • Cameron: When Uncle Salman goes to sleep, let's burn down the house. is a quiet, slow-paced, wistful, and winsome film that somehow managed to make me smile while painting a lonely blue portrait of people who need to find confidence. —  DVD Verdict
  • She has a tendency to use the same images over and over again - she spends so much time kissin 'in the rain that it seems a miracle she hasn't developed trenchfoot - but she is fantastically good at regarding teenage life with a kind of wistful, sepia-toned nostalgia: "When you're 15, somebody tells you they you love you, you're gonna believe it," runs the chorus of Fifteen. —  Music news, reviews, comment and features | guardian.co.uk
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Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

sorrowful ·  mournful ·  pensive ·  childlike ·  regretful ·  thoughtful ·  poignant ·  shy ·  tremulous ·  passionate ·  hopeful ·  uneasy
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (2)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. From obsolete wistly, intently.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (1)

  1. Prob. for *whistful, based on the older adverb wistly, which is prob. for whistly. The assumption that wistful stands for wishful is untenable; for the required change wishful later *wisful later wistful could not occur in the modern English period, particularly with wishful itself remaining in use; but the sense ‘longing’ appears to have arisen in part from association with wishful. It is to be noted that wistful in the earliest instance quoted (Browne) does not mean, as some dictionaries give it, merely ‘observant’ or ‘attentive,’ and that its later uses are more or less indefinite, indicating that it was orig. a poetical word, based on some other, which other is prob. wistly for whistly as here assumed.
 

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/ˈwɪstfəl/
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