Melancholia

 WORD OF THE DAY

melancholia / noun / mel-un-KOH-lee-uh

Definition
1: severe depression characterized especially by profound sadness and despair
2a: a sad quality or mood
2b: melancholy

Examples
“His last single, 2020’s 'Finding Rest In a Weary World,' was impressive but relatively subdued, tinged with ambient melancholia even as the beat hit its stride.”
— Sue Park, Pitchfork, 18 Mar. 2022

To help with this season’s melancholia, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead contributed original music.
— Men's Health, 10 June 2022

Did You Know?
Melancholia traces back to Greek melan‑ ("black, dark") and cholē ("bile").
Medical practitioners once adhered to the system of humors—bodily fluids that included black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm.
An imbalance of these humors was thought to lead to disorders of the mind and body.
One suffering from an excess of black bile (believed to be secreted by the kidneys or spleen) could become sullen and unsociable—liable to anger, irritability, brooding, and depression.
Today, doctors no longer ascribe physical and mental disorders to disruptions of the four humors, but the word melancholia is still used in psychiatry (it is identified as a "subtype" of clinical depression in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) and as a general term for despondency.
The older term ­melancholy, ultimately from the same Greek roots, is historically a synonym of melancholia but now more often refers to a sad or pensive mood.