"Melancholy" traces back through Old French and Latin to a Greek word meaning "sadness," melankholia, which has bits that literally mean "(having too much) black bile."

That's why it looks like other words having to do with dark or black things in the body, like "melanin" and "melanoma;" and why it looks like other words having to do with bile, pretty much just "cholera" and "choleric."

As far as I know, black bile isn't really a thing today in modern medicine. But as I've mentioned before, in ancient, prescientific times, people thought that if someone had too much of a certain substance (or "humor"), it would affect their personality. They thought black bile was a sign (or maybe a cause) of having a sad, depressed personality.

So, we've used the words "melancholic" and "melancholy" in English since the 1300s to describe people who are deeply, profoundly sad or depressed, as if their minds or hearts are clouded with darkness. 

Today, we don't often use "melancholic." But we do often use "melancholy" as a formal, serious synonym of "sad," "gloomy," or "hopeless" (or "sadness," "gloom," or "hopelessness"). 

In other words, if you feel melancholy, you're feeling sad, hopeless, and gloomy.

And if you have melancholy, you're in a sad, hopeless, gloomy mood.

Part of speech:

It's both a noun ("He suffers from melancholy") and an adjective ("He seems melancholy").

Other forms: 

None are common today.

how to use it:

Pick the common, serious, formal word "melancholy" (instead of plainer synonyms like "sad," "glum," "blue," "heavy-hearted," and "miserable") when you want to emphasize how someone seems to be feeling deep, dark, serious, quiet, and hopeless.

You might talk about melancholy people and their melancholy moods, faces, glances, comments, or sighs.

Or you might talk about melancholy sounds, especially music. "The violin can sound so melancholy." Here's Edgar Allan Poe: "Iron bells! ... How we shiver with affright at the melancholy menace of their tone!"

examples:

"A loose piece of corrugated iron roofing was banging in the cold wind with a melancholy sound."
— Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass, 2000

"Damon Albarn says he felt 'quite lost' and 'sad' while writing Blur's new album, The Ballad Of Darren... A sense of melancholy pervades the music. Albarn has called it an 'aftershock record,' dealing with the pandemic and the deaths of his musician friends."
— Mark Savage, BBC, 19 July 2023

has this page helped you understand "melancholy"?

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this word, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.

study it:

Explain the meaning of "melancholy" without saying "depressed" or "gloomy."

try it out:

Fill in the blank: "Melancholy music plays as (something very sad happens in a show or a movie)."

Example: "At the end of the second season, melancholy music plays as Buffy, heartbroken, boards a bus and leaves everyone she loves."

If you like, use this space to write. (To save your work, copy and paste it into an email or a document.)

before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

This month, our game is "Smorgasbord of Wordly Lore!"

Try a trivia question each day. It’ll have something to do with a food or a drink. You can play on hard mode by answering the question cold, or play on easy mode by highlighting the multiple choice options. To see the correct answer, scroll all the way down. Enjoy!

Try this one today: Congress officially disallowed this in 1981! When a lawyer tries to defend a client's crimes by blaming them on a bad diet full of tasty convenience foods, e.g., individually wrapped snack cakes, this weak defense is known as "the _____ defense."

Highlight below to reveal the multiple choice options.…
A. the Twinkie defense
B. the Ding Dong defense
C. the Little Debbie defense

review this word:

1. The opposite of MELANCHOLY could be

A. SECRET, SNEAKY, or CLANDESTINE.
B. HOPEFUL, CONFIDENT, or SANGUINE.
C. HARSH, INFLEXIBLE, or RHADAMANTHINE.

2. Like you'd expect, John Keats's "Ode on Melancholy" includes phrases like "_____" and "_____."

A. bright star .. moving waters
B. soft hand .. fragrant-curtain'd love
C. mournful Psyche .. anguish of the soul

Answers to the review questions: 1. B 2. C Answer to the game question: the Twinkie defense

a final word:

I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love. I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words. From my blog: On vocabulary...       36 ways to study words.       Why we forget words, & how to remember them.       How to use sophisticated words without being awkward. On writing...       How to improve any sentence.       How to motivate our kids to write.       How to stop procrastinating and start writing.       How to bulk up your writing when you have to meet a word count. From my heart: a profound thanks to the generous patrons, donors, and sponsors that make it possible for me to write these emails. If you'd like to be a patron or a donor, please click here. If you'd like to be a sponsor and include your ad in an issue, please contact me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com. A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.