as in sad
feeling unhappiness she becomes quite melancholic when she reflects on all the lost opportunities of her life

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Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of melancholic The mood looks both delightful and a little melancholic — tiny, abstract people making their way in the biggest, loneliest of places. Lewis Gordon, Vulture, 8 Jan. 2025 The Corbet profile recently published in the New Yorker mentioned his highfalutin reading list, which includes László Krasznahorkai (the source of Béla Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies) and Oswald Spengler — taste that runs toward the dystopian and melancholic. Armond White, National Review, 31 Jan. 2025 There are no big jump scares, the atmosphere is deliberately mundane, and the mood is more melancholic than terrifying. David Sims, The Atlantic, 25 Jan. 2025 Operettas became more melancholic and activist, merging into everything from the Brecht-Weill theater to the modern musical. Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, 31 Dec. 2024 See All Example Sentences for melancholic
Recent Examples of Synonyms for melancholic
Adjective
  • Oklahoma represents the sad conclusion of the Trail of Tears, and Tulsa serves as the meeting point for tribal nations—the Osage, Muscogee, and Cherokee.
    Nicholas Lalla, WIRED, 4 Mar. 2025
  • Police sad officers began providing aid to Mitchell, but medics later pronounced him dead at the scene.
    Rosalio Ahumada, Sacramento Bee, 4 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • Mass layoffs in the Beltway could force some residents to put their homes up for sale at depressed values, denting the real estate market.
    Matt Egan and Alicia Wallace, CNN, 25 Feb. 2025
  • Examples include formerly depressed but now vibrant cities, such as Pittsburgh, and once stagnant but now relatively successful developing countries, such as Bangladesh and Rwanda.
    Foreign Affairs, Foreign Affairs, 25 Feb. 2025
Adjective
  • The Penguins listed Bunting as a healthy scratch early this season because coaches were unhappy with his effort in games and practices.
    Josh Yohe, The Athletic, 6 Mar. 2025
  • Independent distributors are unhappy with the growing percentage of royalty payments for their artists that are too low to be worth processing.
    Bill Rosenblatt, Forbes, 6 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • Even the quieter domestic dramas vying less for box-office glory and more for Academy Awards acclaim feature music lush with classical detail, like Carter Burwell’s melancholy strings in Carol, giving twinkly lyricism to the emotional violence roiling beneath the characters’ skins.
    Fran Hoepfner, Vulture, 27 Feb. 2025
  • Instead, their new record is merely 47 minutes and 17 seconds of relative silence and white noise, a melancholy display of the sound of music if there’s no artists to actually create it.
    Ethan Millman, Rolling Stone, 25 Feb. 2025
Adjective
  • The record for the shortest Oscar-winning performance goes to Beatrice Straight, who played the heartbroken wife of a philandering TV station president in Sidney Lumet’s 1976 film Network.
    Jordan Runtagh, People.com, 2 Mar. 2025
  • Listen to this article Skokie restaurateurs were left heartbroken on Valentine’s Day when a broken water main disaster in northeastern Skokie left the village without drinkable tap water from Feb. 14 through 16.
    Richard Requena, Chicago Tribune, 25 Feb. 2025
Adjective
  • Its economic position is parlous, its demographic situation is miserable and its military capacities have atrophied, and most of the chest-thumping about a revival of European power is empty talk and fantasy politics.
    Ross Douthat, The Mercury News, 4 Mar. 2025
  • But running — the exercise that can happen almost anywhere, any time and for very little expense — always felt miserable.
    Madeline Holcombe, CNN, 2 Mar. 2025
Adjective
  • Brown’s sound design mixes Sousa-like military fanfares with mournful underscoring for Lavinia’s tragedy, neither of which has much to do with Kidwell’s preshow music.
    Emily McClanathan, Chicago Tribune, 26 Feb. 2025
  • Chaos quickly unfolds when the bickering, different-strokes twins find the calamitous heirloom—although Perkins keeps the first act mostly mournful, as the boys struggle with the onslaught of death around them.
    David Sims, The Atlantic, 21 Feb. 2025
Adjective
  • And if that wasn’t bad enough, in extremely rare circumstances, neurologic fallout from measles is delayed, showing up 7 to 10 years post-infection as subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, a degenerative disease that is ultimately fatal, Dr. Lovins says.
    Erica Sloan, SELF, 28 Feb. 2025
  • However, irrational exuberance can leads stocks of good companies to be bad stocks.
    Hersh Shefrin, Forbes, 28 Feb. 2025

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Cite this Entry

“Melancholic.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/melancholic. Accessed 9 Mar. 2025.

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