pensive
Americanadjective
-
dreamily or wistfully thoughtful.
a pensive mood.
- Antonyms:
- thoughtless
-
expressing or revealing thoughtfulness, usually marked by some sadness.
a pensive adagio.
adjective
-
deeply or seriously thoughtful, often with a tinge of sadness
-
expressing or suggesting pensiveness
Related Words
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.
Other Word Forms
- overpensive adjective
- overpensively adverb
- overpensiveness noun
- pensively adverb
- pensiveness noun
Etymology
Origin of pensive
First recorded in 1325–75; 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
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
A few blocks inland, the vibes are less pensive, more effusive at the Fleuria — Los Angeles’ first romance book truck.
From Los Angeles Times
On Thorns, the pensive opening song of The Clearing, she even berates herself for "making a song and dance" about the break-up that inspired Wolf Alice's previous album, Blue Weekend.
From BBC
“Flashing fish, lavish lily, megalomaniacal mosquito, pensive poet,” goes his thinking.
And here's the thing: while they are all winners, they had the demeanour of those with pensive worry.
From BBC
“Your Estragon is funny, lonely, pensive, philosophical and shares your ability to sleep anywhere, at any time,” she wrote on Instagram, referencing Reeves’ character.
From Los Angeles Times
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
