WISTFUL

pensive, wistful

(adjective) showing pensive sadness; “the sensitive and wistful response of a poet to the gentler phases of beauty”

Source: WordNet® 3.1


Etymology

Adjective

wistful (comparative more wistful, superlative most wistful)

Full of longing or yearning.

Sad and thoughtful.

Source: Wiktionary


Wist"ful, a. Etym: [For wishful; perhaps influenced by wistly, which is probably corrupted from OE. wisly certainly (from Icel. viss certain, akin to E. wit). See Wish.]

1. Longing; wishful; desirous. Lifting up one of my sashes, I cast many a wistful, melancholy look towards the sea. Swift.

2. Full of thought; eagerly attentive; meditative; musing; pensive; contemplative. That he who there at such an hour hath been, Will wistful linger on that hallowed spot. Byron.

– Wist"ful*ly, adv.

– Wist"ful*ness, n.

Source: Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary 1913 Edition



RESET




Word of the Day

2 April 2025

COVERT

(adjective) secret or hidden; not openly practiced or engaged in or shown or avowed; “covert actions by the CIA”; “covert funding for the rebels”


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Coffee Trivia

The earliest credible evidence of coffee-drinking as the modern beverage appeared in modern-day Yemen. In the middle of the 15th century in Sufi shrines where coffee seeds were first roasted and brewed for drinking. The Yemenis procured the coffee beans from the Ethiopian Highlands.

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