THE FIRST WORD

melancholy

PRONUNCIATION:

(MEL-uhn-kol-ee) 

MEANING:

noun: A pensive, gloomy, depressed state.
adjective: Having or causing a sad mood.

ETYMOLOGY:

From the former belief that a gloomy state was the result of the excess of black bile. From Latin melancholia, from Greek melancholia (the condition of having an excess of black bile), from melan- (black) + chole (bile), ultimately from the Indo-European root ghel- (to shine), which is also the source of words such as yellow, gold, glimmer, gloaming, glimpse, glass, arsenic, and cholera. Earliest documented use: before 1375.

USAGE:

"Loss, estrangement, and distance--and a mood finely poised between melancholy and melodrama -- are the collection's keynotes."
Life's a beach: New fiction; The Economist (London, UK); Nov 30, 2002.