pensive

Adjective

pensive (comparative more pensive, superlative most pensive)

1. Engaged in, involving, or reflecting deep or serious thought.
   • He sat in pensive silence, weighing his options carefully.
2. Having the appearance of deep, often melancholic, thinking.
   • [T]he donkey, pensive, with bowed head, twitching his ears from time to time, thinking the tempest of stones had not yet ended and was still falling around his head […].Part 1 published in 1605, Part 2 in 1615, translated in 2003, Miguel de Cervantes and translated by Edith Grossman, Don Quixote, page 172
   • The author’s tone grows pensive in the final chapters.
3. Looking thoughtful, especially from sadness.
   • Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce1748, David Hume, Enquiries concerning the human understanding and concerning the principles of moral., London: Oxford University Press, published 1973, § 4
   • Through the deep grass the faces of the three children glowed like pensive moons.1979, J.G. Ballard, The Unlimited Dream Company, chapter 21