What's the difference between melancholy and somber?

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?

Somber


Definition:

  • (v. t.) Alt. of Sombre
  • (a.) Alt. of Sombre
  • (n.) Alt. of Sombre

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Melanomas developed on giant pigmented naevi had a particularly somber prognosis: death occurred within 6, 7 and 3 months respectively in the 3 cases observed.
  • (2) Uncompleted mourning and the depression and somber states of mind it created were absorbed by their children from birth on.
  • (3) In these very old people with very somber prognosis, anemia was corrected by surgery without recurrence after 8 and 10 months respectively.
  • (4) If Trump seems strangely incapable of consistency except in the matter of walling out and deporting immigrants, somber Ted Cruz is lurking nearby to alarm us with his ideological purity.
  • (5) Although most readers consider medical publications to be somber and somnifacient, a critical eye will discover a remarkable array of absurdities and assorted other oddities, totally unintended by the authors.
  • (6) Almost every report on macular degeneration begins with a somber reminder that macular degeneration is the single most common cause of blindness in the elderly in the United States and Europe.
  • (7) 'A lot of the movements to combat violence against women are somber.
  • (8) Coronary lesions with atheromatous deposits occurring in later childhood characterize homozygous type IIa hypercholesterolaemia and condition the somber prognosis of a disease which affects one subject in a million.
  • (9) The statement read: It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust.
  • (10) The day after the election, I walked around the camp and it was really somber,” said Kandi Mossett, a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara tribes who has been camping at Standing Rock since mid-August.
  • (11) The mood was somber, and many people wiped away tears.
  • (12) She suggests that the question for anyone considering standing for the US presidency should be: “What’s your vision for America?” Then she supplies her own answer: “The challenge is to lead in a way that unites us again and renews the American Dream … Ultimately, what happens in 2016 should be about what kind of future Americans want for themselves and their children – and grandchildren.” The start of the book is more somber.
  • (13) Since President Barack Obama took office, there have been at least 16 major mass shootings, after which he has offered somber words of condolence and called for national healing.
  • (14) In 1811 Mary Reynolds, a somber Pennsylvania spinster, awoke from a prolonged sleep as a new personality.
  • (15) This discussion forms the basis of a review of the worldwide literature, but stresses two problems which determine the prognosis: that of diagnosis, which in the majority of cases is very late, and that of their prognosis, which remains somber because of their tendency to metastasize by blood-borne spread and that of locoregional recurrences.
  • (16) In a strong but somber voice, McDonnell told the judge before sentencing that he was “a heartbroken and humbled man” and that he holds himself accountable.
  • (17) In other essays, she tries to educate a caddish boyfriend by sharing wisdom from He’s Just Not That Into You , and unexpectedly surrenders to the madness of wedding gown shopping, in which “dresses are brought out from back rooms with somber reverence, like the Torah being revealed from the ark”.
  • (18) She did not answer a question about whether Trump did not want to offend people, saying only: “It was our honor to issue a statement in remembrance of this important day.” In its original statement, the White House said: “It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust .
  • (19) At the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 369 hall in Louisville, where supporters had hoped to celebrate a Grimes win, the mood quickly turned somber: one minute, a few young employees were playing stickball while waiting for the party to start, and the next the hall was empty, as the few people who had arrived before the race was called went up to the war room to commiserate and watch the results of the statehouse races.
  • (20) Despite significant advances in many areas, the morbidity and mortality statistics remain as somber reminders of the devastation attributed to this epidemic.