What is another word for wistful?

Pronunciation: [wˈɪstfə͡l] (IPA)

"Wistful" is a word used to describe a feeling of gentle sadness, yearning or longing. It is often used to describe a sentimental or nostalgic feeling about someone or something from the past. Synonyms for wistful include melancholic, pensive, nostalgic, regretful, wistfully sad or reminiscent. These words express the emotions of missing someone or something, feeling a sense of sorrowful reflection or a desire to return to a happier time. Wistful can be a positive feeling, as it conveys a sense of reflection and introspection, allowing individuals to appreciate the beauty and significance of memories.

What are the hypernyms for Wistful?

A hypernym is a word with a broad meaning that encompasses more specific words called hyponyms.

What are the opposite words for wistful?

The word "wistful" is defined as a feeling of sadness mixed with a longing or yearning for something. So the antonyms for wistful would be joyful, content, satisfied or fulfilled. If a person is not wistful, they are likely to be cheerful or happy. If they are not experiencing a sense of longing, they may be feeling relaxed, calm or at ease. Other antonyms for wistful could include hopeful, optimistic or elated. Whatever the opposite of wistful may be, it is likely to be a feeling of happiness, positivity and contentment.

What are the antonyms for Wistful?

Usage examples for Wistful

"What am I going to do without you, you mean," corrected Marjorie Dean, with a wistful smile.
"Marjorie Dean High School Freshman"
Pauline Lester
The wistful appeal touched Marjorie.
"Marjorie Dean High School Freshman"
Pauline Lester
Constance shook her head, looking wistful, nevertheless.
"Marjorie Dean High School Freshman"
Pauline Lester

Famous quotes with Wistful

  • Now that I near 80, I realize with wistful pleasure that on many occasions I was 10, 20, 40, even 50 years ahead of my time.
    Benoit Mandelbrot
  • For thousands of years, father and son have stretched wistful hands across the canyon of time, each eager to help the other to his side, but neither quite able to desert the loyalties of his contemporaries. The relationship is always changing and hence always fragile nothing endures except the sense of difference.
    Alan Valentine
  • When we look at the age in which we live—no matter what age it happens to be—it is hard for us not to be depressed by it. The taste of the age is, always, a bitter one. “What kind of a time is this when one must envy the dead and buried!” said Goethe about his age; yet Matthew Arnold would have traded his own time for Goethe’s almost as willingly as he would have traded his own self for Goethe’s. How often, after a long day witnessing elementary education, School Inspector Arnold came home, sank into what I hope was a Morris chair, looked ’round him at the Age of Victoria, that Indian Summer of the Western World, and gave way to a wistful, exacting, articulate despair! Do people feel this way because our time is worse than Arnold’s, and Arnold’s than Goethe’s, and so on back to Paradise? Or because forbidden fruits—the fruits forbidden to us by time—are always the sweetest? Or because we can never compare our own age with an earlier age, but only with books about that age? We say that somebody doesn’t know what he is missing; Arnold, pretty plainly, didn’t know what he was having. The people who live in a Golden Age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks. Maybe we too are living in a Golden or, anyway, Gold-Plated Age, and the people of the future will look back at us and say ruefully: “We never had it so good.” And yet the thought that they will say this isn’t as reassuring as it might be. We can see that Goethe’s and Arnold’s ages weren’t as bad as Goethe and Arnold thought them: after all, they produced Goethe and Arnold. In the same way, our times may not be as bad as we think them: after all, they have produced us. Yet this too is a thought that isn’t as reassuring as it might be.
    Randall Jarrell
  • It will all come back — the wasted splendor, The heart's lost youth like a breaking flower, The dauntless dare, and the wistful, tender Touch of the April hour.
    Edwin Markham
  • I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.
    Oscar Wilde

Related words: wistful meaning, wistful synonyms, wistful in a sentence, definition of wistful, what does wistful mean

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