wistful
adjective

- sad and thinking about something that is impossible or in the past

- full of yearning or desire tinged with melancholy

- someone who is wistful is rather sad because they want something and know that they cannot have it

Cambridge Dictionary / Merriam-Webster / Collins Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

The word "wistful" originated from the Old English word wist, which meant "desire" or "appetite,” and wistful which meant "closely attentive" or "full of desire."

In the Middle English period, wistful took on the connotation of "wishful" or "yearning”, derived from the verb wist or wisten, which meant "to know" or "to be aware." Thus, "wistful" came to signify a state of being aware of one's desires or wishes.

"Wistful" has retained its sense of longing or melancholic nostalgia in modern usage. It describes a feeling of being lost in thought, daydreaming, or having a longing for something that is absent or unattainable. It often suggests a bittersweet sentiment, a mixture of both sadness and a gentle, hopeful yearning.

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BITTERSWEET

“Stay with the contradiction. If you stay, you will see that there is always something more than two opposing truths. The whole truth always includes a third part, which is the reconciliation.”

Alfred Kazin

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SYNONYMS

contemplative, deep in reminiscence, dreamy, forlorn, gazing into the distance, in a daydream, longing, lost in thought, melancholic, nostalgic, pensive, yearning

with a dreamy gaze (faraway gaze/look, hankering after, longing gaze, lost-in-thought expression, melancholy smile, nostalgic sigh, pensive mood, pining for, pining heart, quiet yearning, reflective spirit, sentimental touch, sighing for, sigh of longing, whimsical air, yearning soul)

with a/an air/hint/touch of brooding (daydreaming, dreaminess, dreaming, fantasizing, farness, gazing, hankering, introspection, languidness, meditating, melancholy, mooning, moping, mulling, musing, nostalgia, pensiveness, pondering, reflecting, regret, reminiscing, reverie, rumination, sadness, sentimentality, sighing, soul-searching, whimsy, woolgathering, yearning)

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SMUGGLE OWAD into an English conversation, say something like:

"I was amazed to read how many synonyms English has for the adjective WISTFUL.”

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