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From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.44 [gcide]:
Pensive \Pen"sive\, adjective [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.
The pensive secrecy of desert cell. --Milton.
Anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed. --Pope.
2. Expressing or suggesting thoughtfulness with sadness; as, pensive numbers. --Prior.
From WordNet (r) 2.0 [wn]:
pensive
adjective
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else, speculative, stargazing, taken up, thinking, thought, thoughtful, transported, tristful, unconscious, wistful, withdrawn, woolgathering, wrapped in thought
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Definitions retrieved from local copies of the freely distributed DICT client/server software and databases. Click here for database copyright information. - KM |