pensive

[ pen-siv ]

/ ˈpɛn sɪv /

SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR pensive ON THESAURUS.COM

adjective

dreamily or wistfully thoughtful: a pensive mood.

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

RELATED WORDS

Nearby words

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.

SEE MORE ANTONYMS FOR pensive ON THESAURUS.COM

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 Formspensively, 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

Word Origin and History for pensive

pensive

adj.

late 14c., from Old French pensif "thoughtful, distracted, musing" (11c.), from penser "to think," from Latin pensare "weigh, consider," frequentative of pendere "weigh" (see pendant). Related: Pensively; pensiveness.