dejection

Noun

dejection (countable and uncountable, plural dejections)

1. A state of melancholy or depression; low spirits, the blues.

   Synonyms:

   despondency, downheartedness, crestfallenness, blueness, tristesse, mirthless, blues, depression, distress, dolefulness

2. The act of humbling or abasing oneself.
   • Adoration implies submission and dejection, so that while we worship we cast down ourselves; there must be therefore some great eminence in the object worshipped, or else we should dishonor our own nature in the worship of it.1659, Bishop John Pearson, An Exposition of the Creed

   Synonyms:

   abasement, humiliation, submission

3. A low condition; weakness; inability.
   • Meat remaining in the stomach undigested, dejection of appetite, wind coming upwards, are signs of a phlegmatick constitution.1732, John Arbuthnot, Practical Rules of Diet in the Various Constitutions and Diseases of Human Bodies

   Synonyms:

   dearth, want, deficiency, deficit, inadequacy, infrequency, insufficiency, meagerness, nonsufficiency, lack

4. (archaic) Defecation or feces.
   • No dejection since his entrance, nor has he passed urine.1855, Austin Flint, Clinical Reports on Continued Fever Based on Analyses of One Hundred and Sixty-Four Cases, Linday & Blakiston, First Clinical Report on Continued Fever, Based on an Analysis of...
   • His dejections were frequent, loose, changing in character from hour to hour, made up of undigested food, of mucus and watery fluid, varying in color, mostly green, and never healthy in consistence, color, or odor.1861, James Jackson, Another Letter to a Young Physician, Applewood Books, published 2010, →ISBN, Note I. John Lowell, page 103

   Synonyms:

   excrement, bowel movement, big jobs, cack, call of nature, crap, crapping, defecating, defecation, doing one's ease