dejection

I

(New American Roget's College Thesaurus)

Sadness

Nouns

1. dejection, dejectedness, depression; lowness or depression of spirits; weight or damp on the spirits; low, bad, drooping, or depressed spirits; sinking heart, heaviness of heart; heaviness, gloom; weariness, disgust of life; homesickness; melancholy, sadness, melancholia, doldrums, vapors, megrims, spleen, mal de siècle; blue Monday; horrors, hypochondria, pessimism; despondency, dismay, slough of despond; disconsolation, discontent; hope deferred, blank despondency; Weltschmerz. See disappointment, pain.

2. grief, chagrin, sorrow, heartache, heavy heart, prostration, blues, dumps; broken heart; despair; gravity, solemnity; straight, long, or grave face; death's-head at the feast. Informal, blue devils, mulligrubs.

3. (dejected person) hypochondriac, pessimist; mope, killjoy, spoilsport, wet blanket, party pooper. Informal, grinch. Slang, sourpuss, wet blanket, crepe hanger. See hopelessness.

Verbs

1. be dejected, grieve, mourn, lament (see lamentation); take on, give way, lose heart, despond, languish, flag, droop, sink, lower, look downcast, frown, pout, hang down the head, pull, draw, wear, or make a long face, laugh on the wrong side of the mouth, grin a ghastly smile, look blue; lay or take to heart; mope, brood (over), fret, sulk, pine, repine, despair, dismay.

2. (cause dejection) deject, depress, discourage, dishearten, demoralize, daunt, dispirit, damp[en], dash, cast or knock down; unman, prostrate, break one's heart, cast a gloom or shade on, cast a pall upon, sadden; damp, dash, or wither one's hopes; weigh or lie heavy on the mind; prey on the mind; depress the spirits. Informal, hit one like a ton of bricks.

Adjectives

1. dejected, cheerless, joyless, spiritless; uncheerful, unlivery, unhappy, sad, triste, gray, melancholy; oppressed with or a prey to melancholy; downcast, downhearted; down in the mouth, down on one's luck; heavy, heavy-heart; [down] in the dumps, in the sulks, in the doldrums; in bad humor, sullen, mumpish, dumpish; mopish, moping, moody, blue, glum, sulky, discontented, out of sorts, out of humor, out of spirits; ill at ease, low-spirited, in low spirits; weary, discouraged, disheartened; bearish; despondent, chapfallen, crestfallen.

2. sad, pensive, tristful, doleful, woebegone, tearful, lachrymose, in tears, melancholic, hypochondriacal, bilious, jaundiced, atrabilious, saturnine, splenetic; lackadaisical; grave, sober [as a judge], solemn, grim, grim-faced, grim-visaged, rueful, long-faced.

3. (dejected past consoling) disconsolate, inconsolable, forlorn, comfortless, desolate; sick at heart, soul-sick, heartsick, in despair, lost; overcome, broken down, borne or bowed down; heart-stricken, cut up, dashed, sunk; unnerved, unmanned; downfallen, downtrodden; heartbroken, brokenhearted; careworn.

Adverbs — dejectedly, with a long face, with tears in one's eyes; sadly, etc.

Phrases — misery loves company; Wednesday's child is full of woe; laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone.

Quotations — Everywhere I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded (Mary Shelley), There is no greater pain than to remember a happy time when one is in misery (Dante), When sorrows come, they come not as single spies, but in battalions (Shakespeare), I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless (Elizabeth Browning), Sorrow is tranquillity remembered in emotion (Dorothy Parker), Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness (Fyodor Dostoyevsky), The flesh is sad, alas, and I've read all the books (Stéphane Mallarmé), Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind (Marcel Proust).

Antonyms, see cheerfulness.

II

(Roget's IV) n.

Syn. despondency, sorrow, melancholy; see depression 2 , grief 1 , sadness .

III

(Roget's Thesaurus II) noun A feeling or spell of dismally low spirits: blues, depression, despondence, despondency, doldrums, dolefulness, downheartedness, dumps, dysphoria, funk, gloom, glumness, heavy-heartedness, melancholy, mope (used in plural), mournfulness, sadness, unhappiness. See FEELINGS, HAPPY.