tristful

English

Alternative forms

• tristeful

Etymology

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

Adjective

tristful (comparative more tristful, superlative most tristful)

1. (archaic) Sad, melancholic.
   • 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.