tristful

English

Alternative forms

tristeful

Etymology

From Middle English trystefull; equivalent to trist +‎ -ful.

Adjective

tristful (comparative more tristful, superlative most tristful)

(archaic) Sad, melancholic.
Synonyms: miserable, sorrowful; see also Thesaurus:sad
- 1579, Anthony Munday, The Mirrour of Mutabilitie, London, Book 2, “The Complaint of Adonia Sonne, to King Dauid,”^[1]
  Remember me which past before your time,
  
  Remember how I fell from blisse to bale:
  
  Be mindefull still of my presumpteous crime,
  
  Which forced me to tell this tristfull tale.
- c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iv]:
  […] Heaven’s face doth glow;
  Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
  With tristful visage, as against the doom,
  Is thought-sick at the act.
- 1648, Seneca the Younger, translated by Edward Sherburne, Medea‎^[2], London: Humphrey Moseley, act IV, scene 2, page 42:
  […] So shine thy tristfull light
  With pallid Ray, and with strange Horrour, fright
  The world:
- 1771, Elizabeth Griffith, The History of Lady Barton, London: T. Davies & T. Cadell, Volume 2, Letter 46, p. 184,^[3]
  I think, I want nothing but a ’squire as tristful as yourself, to record my misadventures in the stile of a ballad, called the Disastrous Traveller […]
- 1927, Warwick Deeping, Doomsday‎^[4], Part 3, Chapter 24:
  A wistful look in your mirror, and an air of tristful languor in public, and a sense of being deeper than you thought you were, if you ever thought about it at all.