melancholic
adjective · noun
Simple meaning
Filled with or affected by melancholy—great sadness or depression.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
mehluhnkahlikSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
mɛlənˈkɑlɪk
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Filled with or affected by melancholy—great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.
classical temperament
Pertaining to the melancholic temperament or its associated personality traits.
noun
A person who is habitually melancholy.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Filled with or affected by melancholy—great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.
Used this way, melancholic is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It carries more force than its gentler alternatives. It turns up most in personal or emotional discussion and literature or storytelling contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Negative
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Strong
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Serious and weighty
- Usage feel
- Everyday but emotionally strong
Where it naturally appears
- Personal/emotional discussion
- Literature/storytelling
Nearby words
- melancholy , more formal, and heavier in everyday conversation
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
Synonyms
Sense: filled with or affected by melancholy—great sadness or depression
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.