What's the difference between dour and melancholic?

Dour


Definition:

  • (a.) Hard; inflexible; obstinate; sour in aspect; hardy; bold.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Reports from the scenes of Muslim Brotherhood and Freedom and Justice Party rallies conveyed a dour mood in Cairo, while active clashes were reported in both coastal cities and upper Egypt.
  • (2) There’s hard work and dour activities and that’s what I’m going to be doing.” Corbyn and his deputy, Tom Watson , are expected to make regular – and more public – visits to Scotland to help Scottish Labour avoid a further rout at next May’s Holyrood elections; the latest opinion polls suggest the SNP is on course to win a second successive overall majority with its approval ratings at more than 50%.
  • (3) However, as we watch Blade Runner , Deckard doesn’t feel like a replicant; he is dour and unengaged, but lacks his victims’ detached innocence, their staccato puzzlement at their own untrained feelings.
  • (4) Reith, “his dour handsome face scarred like that of a villain in a melodrama”, was “a strange shepherd for such a mixed, bohemian flock … he had under his aegis a bevy of ex-soldiers, ex-actors, ex-adventurers which … even a Dartmoor prison governor might have had difficulty in controlling”.
  • (5) The dour Zenawi could not resist a swipe at western pundits who had once written off Africa.
  • (6) A spectacular fall from grace on the pitch – from first to seventh, playing dour football that is anathema to fans who feasted on success throughout the Ferguson era – will also lead to renewed scrutiny of the club's controversial US owners, the Glazer family , away from it.
  • (7) The seafront was grey and almost deserted; outside the dour concrete venue, there was a single delegate having a blustery cigarette.
  • (8) But it was in westerns that Peck's dour integrity showed itself best: unshaven and tough in Yellow Sky (1948); a dude learning to adapt to the west in The Big Country (1958); and obsessively after the men who raped and killed his wife in The Bravados (1958).
  • (9) On Tuesday, the bunkhouse breakfast room felt like a hunting lodge, with wives and girlfriends serving meals while working-class men with beards, flannel shirts and dour expressions milled about.
  • (10) Milosevic himself, until then a dour and orthodox communist, appeared to realise his gift for rhetoric and the power of nationalism.
  • (11) Saki (Hector Hugh Munro, 1870-1916) was raised by his strict, dour aunts and grandmother, and was gay but closeted all his life – for good reason, since homosexual acts between men were still illegal.
  • (12) Fun is fun, and please don't try and stop people having fun, things are dour enough as it is."
  • (13) Because there is no ‘message’ – there’s just Jeremy!” Membership Event: Guardian Live | The future of Labour: meet the next leader By the end of the night, even the dour stewards were applauding.
  • (14) This late action made the preceding dour fare seem all the more disappointing.
  • (15) We were told he would be the dour, humourless lefty; and again he has been a challenge to expectations.
  • (16) We talk some more about Mad Men , about: "The swirl and sound and fury of it… For a show that is as dour and moody and pendulous as ours, we have fun."
  • (17) George averaged only 14.5 points and six rebounds in the first two games of the series and started slowly against on Friday before gathering pace in the dour encounter.
  • (18) The two TV presenters broadcasting from the crowd – she in a gold-spangled minidress and rigid curls, him dour in black tie – shot baleful looks in his direction as he carried on honking.
  • (19) Murray is a bit dour true to his Scottish nature but he is an excellent player.
  • (20) Jeremy Corbyn conceded that it would not be easy to revive Labour’s position in Scotland but promised “hard work and dour activities” as he made his first visit to the nation since his election as party leader.

Melancholic


Definition:

  • (a.) Given to melancholy; depressed; melancholy; dejected; unhappy.
  • (n.) One affected with a gloomy state of mind.
  • (n.) A gloomy state of mind; melancholy.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) The authors took multiple serum samples for measurement of melatonin between 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 a.m. in seven male depressed patients with melancholia and five healthy male control subjects and found that melancholic patients had a significantly lower rise of melatonin.
  • (2) With the Extracted Criteria, initial insomnia, early waking, anorexia, weight loss, loss of libido, and worsened mood in the morning were all significantly more common in melancholia than in non-melancholic depression, while increased appetite was more common in non-melancholia.
  • (3) Patients with a past history of major melancholic depression or severe agoraphobia had similar binding parameters as panic disorder patients without a history of depression or severe agoraphobia.
  • (4) Every episode was diagnosed cross-sectionally as schizophrenic, melancholic, manic, manic-depressive mixed, schizodepressive, schizomanic or schizomanic-depressive mixed.
  • (5) Lower fT3 levels were also observed in melancholic depressed patients when compared with nonmelancholic depressed patients or when compared with normal control subjects.
  • (6) Melancholic episode: according to "Major Depression, Melancholic Type" of DSM-III-R. Manic episode: according to the criteria of DSM-III, slightly modified.
  • (7) Controlling for baseline biological, clinical, and demographic factors eliminated the higher prolactin response in the melancholic and psychotic patients, attenuated the blunted GH response in the unipolar patients, and revealed a blunted GH response in the melancholic patients.
  • (8) Occasionally certain behavioural styles and symptoms can be seen in melancholics which are difficult to classify as hysterical or pseudohysterical.
  • (9) However, when subjects were stratified based upon the presence or absence of DSM III-R melancholic features, the melancholic depressives showed little change in weekly depression ratings compared to patients without melancholic symptoms (p less than 0.001).
  • (10) Sixty-four percent of buspirone patients and 50% of placebo patients were melancholic; 64% of buspirone patients and 74% of placebo patients discontinued treatment before the end of the study.
  • (11) To explore whether abnormal CCK secretion during feeding may be related to pathophysiological mechanisms in disorders associated with appetite abnormalities, we report here studies of the plasma CCK response to a test meal in patients with bulimia nervosa, as well as seasonal (hyperphagic) and melancholic (anorexic) depression.
  • (12) A tendency in the opposite direction of the thyroxine values was found in bipolar (melancholic) patients.
  • (13) The results suggest that the 'depressive attributional style' may be specific to melancholic patients, and underline the importance of studying well-defined diagnostic subgroups.
  • (14) The test may have power in differentiating severe melancholic depression, mania, or acute psychosis from chronic psychosis (87% specificity) or dysthymia (77% specificity).
  • (15) In addition, when patients with more severe, melancholic, subtype of depression were examined, adinazolam was also as effective as imipramine.
  • (16) In the depressed group, irritability and DSM-III-R melancholic type predicted 40% or the variance of stage 4 increment after ritanserin, as assessed by stepwise multiple regression.
  • (17) In conditions of conflict between probability and value of reinforcement the dogs manifested two opposite strategies of behaviour: orientation to highly probable events (choleric and phlegmatic) and to low-probable events (sanguinic and melancholic) what is connected with individual properties of functioning and the character of interaction of four brain structures (frontal cortex, hippocampus, hypothalamus, amygdala).
  • (18) The sensitivity of the DST (rate of a positive outcome, or nonsuppression of cortisol) in major depression is modest (about 40%-50%) but is higher (about 60%-70%) in very severe, especially psychotic, affective disorders, including major depression with psychotic as well as melancholic features, mania, and schizoaffective disorder.
  • (19) Serotonin in platelet-free plasma and in platelets from melancholics was significantly reduced to 30% and 60% of their respective control values.
  • (20) Many wept, wiping tears off their faces as the melancholic tunes of the hymns reached them through loudspeakers.