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View synonyms for pensive

pensive

[ pen-siv ]

adjective

  1. dreamily or wistfully thoughtful:

    a pensive mood.

    Antonyms: thoughtless

  2. expressing or revealing thoughtfulness, usually marked by some sadness:

    a pensive adagio.



pensive

/ ˈpɛnsɪv /

adjective

  1. deeply or seriously thoughtful, often with a tinge of sadness
  2. expressing or suggesting pensiveness
“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


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Derived Forms

  • ˈpensiveness, noun
  • ˈpensively, adverb
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Other Words From

  • pensive·ly adverb
  • pensive·ness noun
  • over·pensive adjective
  • over·pensive·ly adverb
  • over·pensive·ness noun
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Word History and Origins

Origin of pensive1

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
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Word History and Origins

Origin of pensive1

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

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.
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Example Sentences

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.

His face was vacant, his eyes pensive, as he stood there undisturbed by the flow of a language he did not understand.

The elegance of his stature and the pensive melancholy of his classic features invested him with a peculiar power of fascination.

His little brother Etienne, the tiniest mite in the regiment, looks pensive.

Ruth was too shy to keep up the conversation by any remark of her own, although his gentle, pensive manner was very winning.

The poet's lyre has not many strings, and the strains of sadness, of pensive melancholy, are almost absent.

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