melancholy

1. 1.

   characterized by or causing or expressing sadness

   “growing more melancholy every hour”

   “her melancholic smile”

   “we acquainted him with the melancholy truth”

   Synonymsmelancholic

   Similarsad
2. 2.

   grave or even gloomy in character

   “solemn and mournful music”

   “a suit of somber black”

   “a somber mood”

   Synonymssombersombre

   Similardepressing

Other forms of melancholy

plural

melancholies·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about melancholy

What does melancholy mean?

melancholy means "a feeling of thoughtful sadness". That is the primary sense; the word has 5 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in melancholy?

melancholy has 4 syllables: mel-an-cho-ly. The stress falls on "mel". In IPA it is /ˈmɛlənˌkɑli/.

What is another word for melancholy?

Close synonyms include black bile, melancholic, somber, sombre. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

Is melancholy a common word?

melancholy is banded "Familiar" — widely understood, used when the subject calls for it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with melancholy?

4 words rhyme with melancholy. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.