What's the difference between ennui and melancholy?

Ennui


Definition:

  • (n.) A feeling of weariness and disgust; dullness and languor of spirits, arising from satiety or want of interest; tedium.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) But what they take for a witticism might very well be true; most of Ellis's novels tell more or less the same story, about the same alienated ennui, and maybe they really are nothing more than the fictionalised diaries of an unremarkably unhappy man.
  • (2) Best of the bunch is 2006’s Tempbot , which beautifully satirises the spirit-crushing ennui of office environments by imagining a robot struggling to connect with homo sapiens co-workers who often seem as bereft of humanity as he is.
  • (3) It is important that the spirit of rainbow nation is extracted from the ennui of an increasingly jaded and complacent African National Congress, which, as with so many post-liberation ruling parties, is in danger of losing its moral compass.
  • (4) Nonetheless, the utilitarian fiction of Mr Fairweather and His Family was a superb piece of socially useful work I treasure to this day and I remain eternally grateful to its titular and nonexistent, ennui-ridden antihero Mr Fairweather, the Josef K of prescriptive childcare literature, for normalising my early years.
  • (5) They have turned mealtimes into the focus of every ounce of existential angst and middle-class ennui they can muster.
  • (6) Allen became famous only four years ago, yet already she has the ennui of a jaded veteran.
  • (7) Paras Anand, head of European equities at Fidelity Worldwide Investment The ECB’s strategy has as many shortcomings as potential benefits and it is hard not to feel a sense of, if not disappointment, then ennui at today’s announcement.
  • (8) But then there was always the "faceless record button", and the fear of ennui.
  • (9) If the films are extended games of he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not between glamorous stars (including Marcello Mastroianni , Jeanne Moreau and Alain Delon ), they also all share a sense of ennui and drift.
  • (10) Instead a combination of ennui at the ease of the group, added to fatigued resignation about England’s prospects when they get to France, conspired to rob Roy Hodgson of what should have been a moment of quiet triumph.
  • (11) Also showing will be Youth, an English-language drama directed by Paolo Sorrentino , featuring Michael Caine as an ageing composer plagued by ennui.
  • (12) And another example of Apple Maps inspired existential ennui: @ guardian It's decided the small town I live in is actually on a tiny deserted island 10 km west of here #iOS6maps — Tsana Dolichva (@Tsana_D) September 20, 2012 We'll be updating this blogpost as we receive further examples.
  • (13) She details whales banging their heads against their tanks and grinding their teeth on the walls, floors and bars until their teeth break or are worn to the pulp, allegedly because of boredom, frustration and ennui.
  • (14) Too many explosions, searching dead bodies for intelligence, hours of ennui and minutes of terror, lots of blood, holding the dying, all this and more had taken a toll.
  • (15) Occasionally we did so, although we often stumbled, as if out of ennui, against lesser sides.
  • (16) The opening sequence of Glue captures this ennui in unsettling, semi-hallucinatory fashion.
  • (17) Muscular and psychological rigidity, weariness, ennui and anhedonia may be the only clues to the presence of alexithymia.
  • (18) The effect is to induce a terrible ennui, a defeatist sense that, no matter how much evidence there is that something is unacceptable, we accept it anyway.
  • (19) The collection of sullen Keanu Reeves models is the work of Japanese company idk: "a remarkable instance of 3D mini ennui moving to the mass market," as 3Ders put it.
  • (20) And in those tiny moments of rest between the ennui of shadow cabinet meetings, there's a helpful spin doctor who can press a promotional copy of the Sun into your hands."

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?