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Wistful Has a Wishful History
We see you there, dear reader, gazing silently up at the moon, heart aching to know the history of wistful, as if it could be divined on the lunar surface. And we’d like to ease your melancholy by telling you that the knowledge you seek—nay, pine for—is closer at hand. But the etymology of wistful, while intriguing, is not entirely clear. It’s thought that the word is a combination of wistly, a now-obsolete word meaning “intently” and, perhaps, the similar-sounding wishful. Wistly, in turn, may have come from whistly, an old term meaning “silently” or “quietly.” What’s more certain is that our modern wistful is a great word to describe someone full of pensive yearning, or something inspiring such yearning.
Examples of wistful in a Sentence
Siddhant Adlakha, Variety, 28 Jan. 2025
Where there was once a wistful Mona Lisa-style facial expression — lips parted enough to suggest a smile or a grimace, depending on perspective — now there is no room for interpretation.
—Leah Dolan, CNN, 28 Jan. 2025
In the Andantino, the wistful melody that is passed around different sections gained emotional depth through the coloristic details Muti brought out in the accompaniment.
—Corinna Da Fonseca-Wollheim, New York Times, 22 Jan. 2025
And the wistful speculation ends when Jamie lovingly points out that their daughter’s survival is extremely unlikely.
—Kimberly Roots, TVLine, 17 Jan. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Wistful.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wistful. Accessed 2 Feb. 2025.
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