melancholiac

[mel-uh n-koh-lee-ak]

adjective

affected with melancholia.

noun

a person who is affected with melancholia.

Origin of melancholiac

First recorded in 1860–65; melancholi(a) + -ac

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Examples from the Web for melancholiac

Historical Examples of melancholiac

He remembered one of those men in the islands who had become a melancholiac.
The Law of Hemlock Mountain
Hugh Lundsford
A saint in ecstasy is as motionless and irresponsive and one-idea'd as a melancholiac.
A Book of Exposition
Homer Heath Nugent
But, Carley, you are not a sentimentalist, or a melancholiac.
The Call of the Canyon
Zane Grey
A man subjected long to that soul-cramping stress, with no outlet or abatement, would have become a melancholiac.
The Tempering
Charles Neville Buck
His attitude toward them is that of the paranoiac, vindictive, rather than that of the melancholiac, humiliated.
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 56, March 1900
Various

Word Origin and History for melancholiac

n.

1863, from melancholy. Earlier in same sense was melancholian (mid-14c.).

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper