melancholic

Etymology

From Ancient Greek μελαγχολικός (melankholikós, “atrabilious, impulsive, of atrabilious or melancholic temperament”), from μελαγχολία (melankholía, “melancholy”). Effectively, its English equivalent is melancholy + -ic.

adj

1. Filled with or affected by melancholy—great sadness or depression, especially of a thoughtful or introspective nature.
   Just as the melancholic eye / Sees fleets and armies in the sky.
2. (dated) Pertaining to black bile (melancholy).
3. (classical temperament) Pertaining to the melancholic temperament or its associated personality traits.

noun

1. A person who is habitually melancholy.
   Kafka, Hart Crane, Jackson Pollock, Tennessee Williams, Mark Rothko, melancholics all, so why shouldn’t we accept our own bleakness and take long walks in the winter woods and look at the gnarled limbs of trees and struggle with the inscrutable and accept the beauty of permanent turmoil? March 16, 2008, Garrison Keillor, “Woe Be Gone”, in New York Times