tristful

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English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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

Adjective

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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.