pensive
[pen-siv]
- dreamily or wistfully thoughtful: a pensive mood.
- expressing or revealing thoughtfulness, usually marked by some sadness: a pensive adagio.
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Origin of pensive
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.
Antonyms
1. thoughtless.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018
Examples from the Web for pensive
Contemporary Examples
One of us cautious and pensive, one of us quick and outspoken.
Hemingway is shown on p. 89, pensive with rifle at a pheasant shoot in Idaho.
Venus was the quiet one: pensive and observant of everything around her.
Another image features the First Lady in a pensive pose, wearing a black Michael Kors sweater and ball skirt.
It is, alternately, a provocative and pensive soap opera that puts the gothic in Southern Gothic.
Historical Examples
Do you see how pensive she is, with her cheek resting on her hand?
In a Steamer Chair and Other StoriesRobert Barr
The pale beauty of her pensive face won her friends wherever she went.
Henry DunbarM. E. Braddon
Nothing could be firmer than the tone of this letter, in spite of its pensive gentleness.
Henry DunbarM. E. Braddon
Florence was pensive, and an air of painful depression hung about her.
When Macquart was on his rounds, she passed her time in lazy, pensive idleness.
The Fortune of the RougonsEmile Zola
pensive
- deeply or seriously thoughtful, often with a tinge of sadness
- expressing or suggesting pensiveness
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Word Origin
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
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Word Origin and History for 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.
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Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper