wistful

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 26, 2016 is: wistful • \WIST-ful\  • adjective 1 : full of yearning or desire tinged with melancholy; also : inspiring such yearning 2 : musingly sad : pensive Examples: As the car pulled away, Lea cast one last wistful glance at the house where she'd spent so many happy years. "The book left me in wistful reverie, envisioning that shimmering pond and a rugged, robust old gentleman in his 'herringbone suit' and jaunty wide-brimmed straw hat, sitting on a three-legged wooden chair in front of an easel, his brushes flying." — Elfrieda Abbe, The Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota), 11 Sept. 2016 Did you know? Are you yearning to know the history of wistful? If so, we can ease your melancholy a little by telling you that wistful comes from a combination of wishful and wistly, a now obsolete word meaning "intently." We can't say with certainty where wistly came from, but it may have sprung from whistly, an old term meaning "silently" or "quietly." How did the supposed transition from a word meaning "quietly" to one meaning "intently" come about? That's something to muse about, but the answer isn't known. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.