Melancholic

adj, noun

adj, noun ·4 syllables ·Moderate ·High school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    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?"

  2. 2
    someone subject to melancholia wordnet
Adjective
  1. 1
    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."

  2. 2
    Pertaining to black bile (melancholy). dated
  3. 3
    Pertaining to the melancholic temperament or its associated personality traits.
Adjective
  1. 1
    characterized by or causing or expressing sadness wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
sadambivertatrabiliaratrabiliaryatrabiliousatrabilious

Example

More examples

"Sometimes he's happy, sometimes melancholic."

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.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.