Pensive

3 definitions found

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]:

  Pensive \Pen"sive\, a. [F. pensif, fr. penser to think, fr. L.
     pensare to weigh, ponder, consider, v. intens. fr. pendere to
     weigh. See {Pension}, {Poise}.]
     1. Thoughtful, sober, or sad; employed in serious reflection;
        given to, or favorable to, earnest or melancholy musing.
        [1913 Webster]


  
              The pensive secrecy of desert cell.   --Milton.
        [1913 Webster]
  
              Anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed. --Pope.
        [1913 Webster]
  
     2. Expressing or suggesting thoughtfulness with sadness; as,
        pensive numbers. --Prior.
        [1913 Webster]

From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:

  pensive
       adj 1: persistently or morbidly thoughtful [syn: {brooding}, {broody},
               {contemplative}, {meditative}, {musing}, {pondering},
               {reflective}, {ruminative}]
       2: showing pensive sadness; "the sensitive and wistful response
          of a poet to the gentler phases of beauty" [syn: {wistful}]

From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0 [moby-thes]:

  82 Moby Thesaurus words for "pensive":
     absent, absentminded, absorbed, abstracted, atrabiliar,
     atrabilious, bemused, blue, brooding, castle-building, cogitative,
     cognitive, concentrating, concentrative, conceptive, conceptual,
     conceptualized, contemplating, contemplative, daydreaming,
     daydreamy, deliberating, deliberative, dreaming, dreamy, drowsing,
     ecstatic, elsewhere, engrossed, excogitating, faraway, funky,
     grave, half-awake, ideative, in a reverie, in a trance,
     in the clouds, introspective, lost, lost in thought, meditating,
     meditative, melancholic, melancholy, mental, mooning, moonraking,
     museful, musing, napping, nodding, noetic, oblivious,
     pipe-dreaming, pondering, prehensive, preoccupied, rapt,
     reflecting, reflective, ruminant, ruminating, ruminative, sad,
     saddened, serious, sober, somewhere else, speculative, stargazing,
     taken up, thinking, thought, thoughtful, transported, tristful,
     unconscious, wistful, withdrawn, woolgathering,
     wrapped in thought