This week’s theme
Random words

This week’s words
trumped-up
stormy petrel
melancholia
pensive
huckster

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Read it today

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(PEN-siv)

MEANING:

adjective: Sadly thoughtful; wistful.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Old French pensif (pensive), from penser (to think), from Latin pensare (ponder), frequentative of pendere (to weigh). Ultimately from the Indo-European root (s)pen- (to draw, to spin), which also gave us pendulum, spider, pound, pansy, pendant, ponder, appendix, penthouse, depend, spontaneous, vilipend, pendulous, ponderous, filipendulous, equipoise, prepend, and perpend. Earliest documented use: 1393.

USAGE:

“When we met last spring, I expected the Belfast-born investor ... to be elated. Instead I found him to be pensive and almost post-traumatic.”
Dearbhail McDonald; ‘Nama Nearly Destroyed Me’ -- Top London Hotelier; Sunday Independent (Dublin, Ireland); Sep 18, 2016.

See more usage examples of pensive in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: