What's the difference between despondent and melancholy?

Despondent


Definition:

  • (a.) Marked by despondence; given to despondence; low-spirited; as, a despondent manner; a despondent prisoner.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) After she hit the two-year mark, five-month mark, she’s been despondent.
  • (2) It was hard to reconcile Pistorius's despondent figure in black suit and tie and white shirt with the "blade runner" who thrilled stadiums around the world and became the first amputee to run in the Olympics .
  • (3) But actually what we felt as the days and weeks passed – me and Kelly and my father – was a sense of despondency, of being let down, of just sinking through the system.
  • (4) In 46%, the subject had expressed despondency over illness.
  • (5) There is a sense of despondency spreading in Pakistan.
  • (6) The value of Brazil's currency, the real, has ballooned since President Lula took power, leaving exporters despondent and leading Goldman Sachs to classify it as the most overvalued currency on earth.
  • (7) , became a battle manual for despondent Democrats after George W Bush’s second election victory.
  • (8) He told worshippers at Durham cathedral: "It is very easy to be despondent about the church.
  • (9) Pablo Simón, a political science professor at Madrid’s Carlos III University, argues that a fresh election and the attendant politicking could further alienate an already despondent electorate.
  • (10) In Spike Jonze 's Her, set in a near future LA, Phoenix is Theodore, a despondent, solitary writer whose life picks up when he falls in love with Samantha, a portable, artificially intelligent operating system who provides more than he could have hoped for.
  • (11) [It is] all the Ds: despair, depression, despondency.” “Chinese media are under a lot of pressure right now.
  • (12) Jose Mourinho: Rafa Benitez destroyed my work at Inter within six months Read more There wasn’t too much to get excited or despondent about in any of the displays in New York, Charlotte or here in Washington DC.
  • (13) Rob came very close to death many times, and I think part of James's despondency now comes from having saved Rob so many times, only to lose him in the end.
  • (14) They have been left despondent by Francis's occasional comments on the issue, in which he has generally defended the church while condemning the abuse.
  • (15) Despondent MPs tonight voiced fears that Britain may experience a milder ­version of the "clean hands" affair that brought down Italy's postwar political settlement in the 1990s.
  • (16) Strong was despondent over Bilibid but recovered and developed a noteworthy career in American tropical medicine.
  • (17) It has been demonstrated that a small proportion of women taking oral contraceptives develop a depressive syndrome characterized by despondency, tension, and changes in sex desire.
  • (18) A classic portrait of the grieving widower, his despondency did not surprise mental health professionals.
  • (19) For those who don't get the results they hoped for – and their chosen universities – the moments after the envelope are full of dread and despondency.
  • (20) It is easy to see why players bounce off Klopp and indeed it was tempting to wonder if Chelsea’s despondent players were casting the occasional envious glance at the German, whose energetic and engrossing touchline demeanour offered a welcome shade of light next to José Mourinho ’s dark scowl.

Melancholy


Definition:

  • (n.) Depression of spirits; a gloomy state continuing a considerable time; deep dejection; gloominess.
  • (n.) Great and continued depression of spirits, amounting to mental unsoundness; melancholia.
  • (n.) Pensive maditation; serious thoughtfulness.
  • (n.) Ill nature.
  • (a.) Depressed in spirits; dejected; gloomy dismal.
  • (a.) Producing great evil and grief; causing dejection; calamitous; afflictive; as, a melancholy event.
  • (a.) Somewhat deranged in mind; having the jugment impaired.
  • (a.) Favorable to meditation; somber.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) One radio critic described Jacobs' late night Sunday show as a "tidying-up time, a time for wistfulness, melancholy, a recognition that there were once great things and great feelings in this world.
  • (2) And melancholy is not the only thing that links Haigh’s work.
  • (3) Melancholy originally had another meaning from the present one.
  • (4) the agitated type of involutional melancholy occurred twice as often in Canada as in Hungary, the apathetic cases were rarer in Canada, and the illness began earlier among Canadian women.
  • (5) Thus New Zealand, like other countries, may be entering an age of melancholy.
  • (6) English explanations stressed religious aspects and a relationship to melancholy.
  • (7) I too was attracted to the paintings of De Chirico and Delvaux, with their dreamplaces – empty, melancholy cities, abandoned temples, broken statues, shadows, exaggerated perspectives.
  • (8) Earlier this week in Janesville, where post-industrial melancholy is evident in a closed car plant and eerily quiet downtown, House speaker Paul Ryan crushed a Trump-style challenger in a congressional primary.
  • (9) There was always a rueful melancholy, stiffened by irony and leavened by humour about him.
  • (10) Song of the summer was Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks, with its odd blend of keening melancholy and positivism.
  • (11) Resorting to a series of Ted the swordsman scenes which may merely be the lurid fantasies of the heroine, director Christine Jeffs never makes it clear whether Hughes was a rampaging philanderer whose sexual conquests and general obliviousness to Plath's mounting depression led to her demise, or a man driven into other women's arms by his wife's chronic melancholy - perhaps the most time-honoured excuse of the inveterate tomcat - or both.
  • (12) "Oh, if one of Dostoevsky's novels, whose black melancholy is regarded with such indulgent admiration, were signed with the name of Goncourt, what a slating it would get all along the line."
  • (13) It's a melancholy fate for any writer to become an eponym for all that he despised, but that is what happened to George Orwell, whose memory is routinely abused in unthinking uses of the adjective "Orwellian".
  • (14) As the lead singer with the Walker Brothers, he enjoyed a number of melancholy hits with songs such as The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore, My Ship Is Coming In, No Regrets.
  • (15) The leading role is infinitely variable: as Oscar Wilde said , "There are as many Hamlets as there are melancholies."
  • (16) In the right light and with the right song playing on the radio, there is a certain melancholy charm to this bleak highway with its unfolding panorama of wind turbines and electricity pylons stretching to the horizon.
  • (17) On the contrary: Sørens incomparable melancholy, mental agony and anxiety (fear or anguish) forced the faith, existing independently of them, in a radical refining.
  • (18) There’s a magnificent melancholy about him, this shadowy figure performing an act of unrequited love.
  • (19) Closer is a melancholy piece but it is also laugh-out-loud funny, often, as in the very best drama, at moments of starkest pain.
  • (20) Research is needed to determine whether youth will be predisposed to further depressive episodes and, if so, will we be entering a new age of melancholy?