pensive

[ pen-siv ]
See synonyms for pensive on Thesaurus.com
adjective
  1. dreamily or wistfully thoughtful: a pensive mood.

  2. expressing or revealing thoughtfulness, usually marked by some sadness: a pensive adagio.

Origin of pensive

1
First recorded in1325–75; from French (feminine); replacing Middle English pensif, from Middle French (masculine), from pens(er) “to think” (from Latin pēnsāre “to consider, weigh,” literally, “to hang repeatedly,” from pendere “to cause to hang, consider, weigh”) + -if -ive

synonym study For pensive

1. Pensive , meditative , reflective suggest quiet modes of apparent or real thought. Pensive , the weakest of the three, suggests dreaminess or wistfulness, and may involve little or no thought to any purpose: a pensive, faraway look. Meditative involves thinking of certain facts or phenomena, perhaps in the religious sense of “contemplation,” without necessarily having a goal of complete understanding or of action: meditative but unjudicial. Reflective has a strong implication of orderly, perhaps analytic, processes of thought, usually with a definite goal of understanding: a careful and reflective critic.

Opposites for pensive

Other words from pensive

  • pen·sive·ly, adverb
  • pen·sive·ness, noun
  • o·ver·pen·sive, adjective
  • o·ver·pen·sive·ly, adverb
  • o·ver·pen·sive·ness, noun

Words Nearby pensive

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use pensive in a sentence

  • His face was vacant, his eyes pensive, as he stood there undisturbed by the flow of a language he did not understand.

    St. Martin's Summer | Rafael Sabatini
  • The elegance of his stature and the pensive melancholy of his classic features invested him with a peculiar power of fascination.

  • His little brother Etienne, the tiniest mite in the regiment, looks pensive.

  • Ruth was too shy to keep up the conversation by any remark of her own, although his gentle, pensive manner was very winning.

    Ruth | Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
  • The poet's lyre has not many strings, and the strains of sadness, of pensive melancholy, are almost absent.

    Frdric Mistral | Charles Alfred Downer

British Dictionary definitions for pensive

pensive

/ (ˈpɛnsɪv) /


adjective
  1. deeply or seriously thoughtful, often with a tinge of sadness

  2. expressing or suggesting pensiveness

Origin of pensive

1
C14: from Old French pensif, from penser to think, from Latin pensāre to consider; compare pension 1

Derived forms of pensive

  • pensively, adverb
  • pensiveness, noun

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012