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

Derived Forms

• ˈpensiveness, noun
• ˈpensively, adverb

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

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

Word History and Origins

Origin of pensive¹

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

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.

Example Sentences

One of us cautious and pensive, one of us quick and outspoken.

From The Daily Beast

Hemingway is shown on p. 89, pensive with rifle at a pheasant shoot in Idaho.

From The Daily Beast

Venus was the quiet one: pensive and observant of everything around her.

From The Daily Beast

Another image features the First Lady in a pensive pose, wearing a black Michael Kors sweater and ball skirt.

From The Daily Beast

It is, alternately, a provocative and pensive soap opera that puts the gothic in Southern Gothic.

From The Daily Beast

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

From Project Gutenberg

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

From Project Gutenberg

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

From Project Gutenberg

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

From Project Gutenberg

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

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• contemplative
• dreamy
• sober
• thoughtful
• wistful