melancholic
melancholic adjective: filled with or affected by melancholy—great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.
Adjective
melancholic (comparative more melancholic, superlative most melancholic)
- Filled with or affected by melancholy—great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.
- Just as the melancholic eye / Sees fleets and armies in the sky.1718, Mat[thew] Prior, “Alma: Or, The Progress of the Mind”, in Poems on Several Occasions, London: […] Jacob Tonson […], and John Barber […], →OCLC
- But he was also a natural chronicler: one senses that, even as his schemes collapsed, this aesthetic Arab Quixote knew the stories would make great material for his witty, sharp, melancholic writings.2011, Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography – A History of the Middle East, page 268
- Synonyms:
- miserable, despondent, atrabiliary, atrabilious, blitheless, dispirited, blue, bummed out, chapfallen, cheerless
- Pertaining to black bile (melancholy).
- Pertaining to the melancholic temperament or its associated personality traits.
Noun
melancholic (plural melancholics)
- A person who is habitually melancholy.
- Kafka, Hart Crane, Jackson Pollock, Tennessee Williams, Mark Rothko, melancholics all, so why shouldn’t we accept our own bleakness and take long walks in the winter woods and look at the gnarled limbs of trees and struggle with the inscrutable and accept the beauty of permanent turmoil?2008 March 16, Garrison Keillor, “Woe Be Gone”, in New York Times
melancholic meaning in Tamil, Sanskrit, Tagalog and Arabic
melancholic in Tamil
- துன்ப உணர்வு
melancholic in Sanskrit
- filled with or affected by melancholy
- खिन्न khinna
melancholic in Tagalog
- filled with or affected by melancholy
- lukulok
melancholic in Arabic
- filled with or affected by melancholy
- سَوْدَاوِيّ sawdāwiyy
More languagesFewer languages
- melancholic in Indonesian
- melankolis
Synonyms of melancholic
- miserable
- despondent
- atrabiliary
- atrabilious
- blitheless
- dispirited
- blue
- bummed out
- chapfallen
- cheerless
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of melancholic
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more melancholic |
| superlative | most melancholic |
| alternative form (obsolete) | melancholick |
| alternative form (obsolete) | melancholicke |
| alternative form (obsolete) | melancholike |
| Noun | |
| plural | melancholics |
Origin of melancholic
From Latin melancholicus, from Ancient Greek μελαγχολικός (melankholikós, “atrabilious, impulsive, of atrabilious or melancholic temperament”), from μελαγχολία (melankholía, “melancholy”). By surface analysis, melancholy + -ic.
Words formed from melancholic
Phrases with melancholic
Questions about melancholic
- What does melancholic mean?
- Melancholic means filled with or affected by melancholy—great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.
- What is melancholic in Tamil?
- Melancholic in Tamil is துன்ப உணர்வு. See Melancholic meaning in Tamil.
- What part of speech is melancholic?
- Melancholic can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near melancholic in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: melancholic (page history and authors); melancholic (Tamil Wiktionary) (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.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-melancholic.wav.
Cite this entry: “melancholic.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/melancholic. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.