What's the difference between ennui and wistful?

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."

Wistful


Definition:

  • (a.) Longing; wishful; desirous.
  • (a.) Full of thought; eagerly attentive; meditative; musing; pensive; contemplative.

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) I can't pull an invisibility cloak over my house – nor would I wish to," she said, a little wistfully, as if she really wished she had Harry Potter's magic powers.
  • (3) The age-courses of concentrations of reduced (GSH) and oxidized (GSSG) glutathione, of GSH synthesizing enzyme activities, of glutathione S-transferase (GST), of GSSG-reductase (GR) and of biliary GSH and GSSG export were measured in livers from male Uje:WIST rats.
  • (4) – but Russell happily slips in and out of voices and lines from the movie, his recollections punctuated by wistful sighs.
  • (5) The former Internazionale owner Massimo Moratti has been staring wistfully into the distance and wonder what might have been if he had not dished his dosh on the Special One rather than mere players.
  • (6) Shareholders may be forgiven for thinking wistfully of the £55 which Pfizer offered to pay for each of their shiny shares.
  • (7) Jeremy Corbyn still speaks about it wistfully – a rally in Glasgow’s Old Fruitmarket that turned into one of the most emotional moments of his leadership campaign.
  • (8) Softness and tenderness, wistful ironies” he conceded as blindspots, describing Motown as mere “foot fodder” but having a lot of time for relatively minor practitioners such as Joe Tex , who he saw as “hugely smug” but with “great charm and inventiveness”.
  • (9) Every now and then I get wistful for when I was just a consumer of games because I can never have that back, but fortunately the love of the work is strong enough that I’m okay with that, and I’ve played so many life-changing games because I’m seeking them through the lens of a developer.
  • (10) The antiarrhythmic effects and pharmacodynamics of tobanum were evaluated in 28 patients wist paroxysms of reciprocal atrioventricular tachycardia, by using transesophageal cardiac pacing.
  • (11) After the jet-black high school satire Heathers pulled the rug out from under John Hughes and his oversharing Brat Pack, in 1989, American adolescents were left with few offerings, most of them wistful odes to another age – either stylistically, as with the overblown, pirate-radio-themed Christian Slater vehicle Pump Up the Volume; or quite literally, in the case of Richard Linklater’s nostalgia-fuelled 70s pastiche, Dazed and Confused.
  • (12) We are sitting in a boardroom on the seventh floor of the new Birmingham library , the glass walls allowing us a view of a city draped in mist, a sharp contrast to the "paradise" of Swat, with its tall mountains and clear rivers which Malala recalls wistfully.
  • (13) "Oh, it was lovely," said the retired factory worker, 61, as he smiled wistfully in the bright sunshine.
  • (14) The subjects (N = 30) were grouped into high and low levels of thought dysfunction, as measured by the Whitaker Index of Schizophrenic Thinking (WIST).
  • (15) Recently an individually administered instrument (WIST) was introduced as a brief, objective, and quantitative measure of schizophrenic thought processes.
  • (16) There's one aspect of his former life he misses: "The sweat," he sighs wistfully.
  • (17) [Small Talk thinks back wistfully to a time when ice creams were bigger, Liverpool were challenging for the league, Glenn Medeiros was top of the charts…] So you caught the cycling bug?
  • (18) Ss were administered a conjunctive, disjunctive, conditional or biconditional rule learning task, WIST, and Shipley-Hartford Memory Scale.
  • (19) It is now possible to separate wistful thinking from reality.
  • (20) It was with a mixture of wistfulness and his usual forthright bullishness that Sam Allardyce, briefly moving his attention away from the 21st-century football that West Ham United intend to confront Chelsea with on Friday afternoon, looked back eight years and contemplated what he might have achieved in his final season at Bolton Wanderers if he had received greater financial backing – or, to be precise, any financial backing – when his team were hovering around the Champions League places at Christmas.