melancholic
noun
- one of the four temperaments
adjective
No English definition recorded for this entry.
L338353 on Wikidata ↗Wiktionary
adj
Etymology: From Latin melancholicus, from Ancient Greek μελαγχολικός (melankholikós, “atrabilious, impulsive, of atrabilious or melancholic temperament”), from μελαγχολία (melankholía, “melancholy”). By surface analysis, melancholy + -ic.
- 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.”
“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.”
- Pertaining to black bile (melancholy).
- Pertaining to the melancholic temperament or its associated personality traits.
noun
Etymology: From Latin melancholicus, from Ancient Greek μελαγχολικός (melankholikós, “atrabilious, impulsive, of atrabilious or melancholic temperament”), from μελαγχολία (melankholía, “melancholy”). By surface analysis, melancholy + -ic.
- 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?”