pensive

[ pen-siv ]

/ ˈpɛn sɪv /

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adjective

dreamily or wistfully thoughtful: a pensive mood.

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

Nearby words

pension off, pension plan, pensionary, pensioneer trustee, pensioner, pensive, penstemon, penstock, pensée, pensées, pent

Origin of pensive

1325–75; < French (feminine); replacing Middle English pensif < Middle French (masculine), derivative of penser to think < Latin pēnsāre to weigh, consider, derivative of pēnsus, past participle of pendere. See pension, -ive

ANTONYMS FOR pensive

1 thoughtless.

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Related forms

pen·sive·ly, adverbpen·sive·ness, nouno·ver·pen·sive, adjectiveo·ver·pen·sive·ly, adverb

o·ver·pen·sive·ness, noun

Synonym study

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.

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for pensive

One of us cautious and pensive, one of us quick and outspoken.
Mara Wilson Remembers Robin Williams: We're All His Goddamn Kids|Mara Wilson|August 18, 2014|DAILY BEAST
Hemingway is shown on p. 89, pensive with rifle at a pheasant shoot in Idaho.
Defining American Cool From Walt Whitman to Tina Fey and Johnny Depp|Jason Berry|March 25, 2014|DAILY BEAST
Venus was the quiet one: pensive and observant of everything around her.
Understanding Serena Williams’s Steubenville Comments|Allison Samuels|June 20, 2013|DAILY BEAST
It is, alternately, a provocative and pensive soap opera that puts the gothic in Southern Gothic.
Inside 'True Blood'’s Fourth Season|Jace Lacob|June 17, 2011|DAILY BEAST

Meehan is pensive and troubled, his marriage and career in crisis.
Reading the Detective|David Goodwillie|June 9, 2011|DAILY BEAST
His long, aristocratic face wore a more melancholy, pensive air than usual.
Captain Blood|Rafael Sabatini
Leaving them thus in pensive meditation, we regretfully bid them—and our readers—farewell!
The Fugitives|R.M. Ballantyne
I told my story, and, seeing that she was pensive, I exaggerated the misery I had felt at not being able to complete my conquest.
The Memoires of Casanova, Complete|Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
When driving home in the dark with her father she sank into pensive silence.
A Changed Man and Other Tales|Thomas Hardy
Her face was pensive, and she was evidently thinking deeply.
Gordon Keith|Thomas Nelson Page

British Dictionary definitions for pensive

pensive

/ (ˈpɛnsɪv) /

adjective

deeply or seriously thoughtful, often with a tinge of sadness

expressing or suggesting pensiveness

Derived Forms

pensively, adverbpensiveness, noun

Word Origin for pensive

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

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