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.
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The pensive secrecy of desert cell. --Milton.
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Anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed. --Pope.
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2. Expressing or suggesting thoughtfulness with sadness; as,
pensive numbers. --Prior.
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The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
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]
WordNet (r) 2.0
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unconscious, wistful, withdrawn, woolgathering,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
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
brooding, broody, contemplative, meditative, musing, pondering, reflective, ruminative, wistful
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