Word.ws English Dictionary

ennui

UK/ɒnˈwiː//ɑnˈwi/

ennui noun: a gripping listlessness or melancholia caused by boredom; depression.

Noun

ennui (countable and uncountable, plural ennuis)

  1. A gripping listlessness or melancholia caused by boredom; depression.
    • There have always been individuals who toy with the political extremes out of a sort of high-class ennui.2025 June 14, Janan Ganesh, “How boredom gave us chaos”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 20

Verb

ennui (third-person singular simple present ennuis, present participle ennuying, simple past and past participle ennuied or ennuyed)

  1. (transitive) To make bored or listless; to weary.

ennui meaning in Bengali, Malayalam, Kannada and Tagalog

ennui in Bengali

একঘেয়েমি, চরম বিরক্তি

ennui in Malayalam

boredom, tedium, listlessness
വെെരസ്യം, മാനസികഗ്ലാനി, ഗ്ലാനി, നിരുന്മഷം, മുഷിപ്പ്, വിരസത

ennui in Kannada

ennui; weariness from boredom
ಬೇಜಾರು bējāru

ennui in Tagalog

listlessness, boredom
pantot

Synonyms of ennui

Forms of ennui

Noun
pluralennuis
Verb
third-person singular presentennuis
present participleennuying
past participleennuied
pastennuied
past participleennuyed
pastennuyed

Origin of ennui

Unadapted borrowing from French ennui, from Old French enui (“annoyance”), from enuier (modern French ennuyer), from Late Latin inodiō, from Latin in odiō (“hated”). Doublet of annoy.

Words that rhyme with ennui

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about ennui

What does ennui mean?
Ennui means a gripping listlessness or melancholia caused by boredom; depression.
What is ennui in Bengali?
Ennui in Bengali is একঘেয়েমি, চরম বিরক্তি. See Ennui meaning in Bengali.
What part of speech is ennui?
Ennui can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce ennui?
Ennui is pronounced /ɒnˈwiː/ (UK).
What is the plural of ennui?
The plural of ennui is ennuis.

Words near ennui in the dictionary

  1. ennoblizes
  2. ennoblizing
  3. ennog
  4. ennogs
  5. Enns
  6. ennui
  7. ennuied
  8. ennuis
  9. ennuye
  10. ennuyed
  11. ennuying

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ennui (page history and authors); ennui (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); ennui (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); ಬೇಜಾರು (Kannada) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-ennui.ogg.

Cite this entry: “ennui.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/ennui. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.