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Wistful Has a Wishful History
We see you there, dear reader, gazing silently up at the moon, heart aching to know the history of wistful, as if it could be divined on the lunar surface. And we’d like to ease your melancholy by telling you that the knowledge you seek—nay, pine for—is closer at hand. But the etymology of wistful, while intriguing, is not entirely clear. It’s thought that the word is a combination of wistly, a now-obsolete word meaning “intently” and, perhaps, the similar-sounding wishful. Wistly, in turn, may have come from whistly, an old term meaning “silently” or “quietly.” What’s more certain is that our modern wistful is a great word to describe someone full of pensive yearning, or something inspiring such yearning.
Examples of wistful in a Sentence
EW.com, 30 Nov. 2024
Longtime fans know wistful jazz is a genre particularly close to V’s heart, demonstrated through his stunning debut solo album, Layover, released last fall.
—Jeff Benjamin, Forbes, 29 Nov. 2024
Altogether, Beckett sounded happy on the phone, hardly wistful.
—Tom Zoellner, SPIN, 27 Nov. 2024
To be sure, this type of nostalgia and wistful reflection speaks to a real-life community that often doesn’t get exposure on TV, which is part of the reason this series gets such stellar (confoundingly so, to some critics) ratings.
—Ben Rosenstock, Vulture, 11 Nov. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Wistful.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wistful. Accessed 17 Dec. 2024.
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