Word.ws English Dictionary

melancholie

melancholie is the obsolete form of melancholy.

Meaning of melancholy

Noun

melancholy (countable and uncountable, plural melancholies)

  1. (historical) Black bile, formerly thought to be one of the four "cardinal humours" of animal bodies.
    • Melancholy, cold and dry, thick, black, and sour, […] is a bridle to the other two hot humours, blood and choler, preserving them in the blood, and nourishing the bones., Bk.I, New York 2001, p.148
  2. Great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.
    • My mind was troubled with deep melancholy.1591 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Second Part of Henry the Sixt, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies. […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and...

See all 4 meanings of melancholy

Forms of melancholie

pluralmelancholies

Questions about melancholie

What is melancholie the obsolete form of?
Melancholie is the obsolete form of melancholy.

Words near melancholie in the dictionary

  1. melancholick
  2. melancholicke
  3. melancholickes
  4. melancholicks
  5. melancholics
  6. melancholie
  7. melancholies
  8. melancholily
  9. melancholiness
  10. melancholious
  11. melancholiously

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: melancholie (page history and authors); melancholy (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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Cite this entry: “melancholie.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/melancholie. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.