PENSIVE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does pensive mean? 

• PENSIVE (adjective)
  The adjective PENSIVE has 2 senses:

1. deeply or seriously thoughtful

2. showing pensive sadness

  Familiarity information: PENSIVE used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• PENSIVE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Deeply or seriously thoughtful

Synonyms:

brooding; broody; contemplative; meditative; musing; pensive; pondering; reflective; ruminative

Context example:

Byron lives on not only in his poetry, but also in his creation of the 'Byronic hero' - the persona of a brooding melancholy young man

Similar:

thoughtful (exhibiting or characterized by careful thought)

Derivation:

pensiveness (persistent morbid meditation on a problem)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Showing pensive sadness

Synonyms:

pensive; wistful

Context example:

the sensitive and wistful response of a poet to the gentler phases of beauty

Similar:

sad (experiencing or showing sorrow or unhappiness)

Derivation:

pensiveness (deep serious thoughtfulness)

 Context examples 

One morning at breakfast, Diana, after looking a little pensive for some minutes, asked him, "If his plans were yet unchanged."

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Then he stayed away for three whole days, and made no sign, a proceeding which caused everybody to look sober, and Jo to become pensive, at first, and then—alas for romance—very cross.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

The old man had, in the meantime, been pensive, but on the appearance of his companions he assumed a more cheerful air, and they sat down to eat.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

“Anything else?” I asked, for Holmes was turning the pipe about in his hand, and staring at it in his peculiar pensive way.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Emma's pensive meditations, as she walked home, were not interrupted; but on entering the parlour, she found those who must rouse her.

(Emma, by Jane Austen)

His clear, pensive gray eyes, and quick, delicate expression, spoke of a nature which had unfolded far from the boisterous joys and sorrows of the world.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Alone I did it. Behold the fruit of pensive nights and laborious days when I watched the little working gangs as once I watched the criminal world of London.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It represented a very lovely woman, with a mild and pensive countenance, justifying, so far, the expectations of its new observer; but they were not in every respect answered, for Catherine had depended upon meeting with features, hair, complexion, that should be the very counterpart, the very image, if not of Henry's, of Eleanor's—the only portraits of which she had been in the habit of thinking, bearing always an equal resemblance of mother and child.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Mrs Musgrove was of a comfortable, substantial size, infinitely more fitted by nature to express good cheer and good humour, than tenderness and sentiment; and while the agitations of Anne's slender form, and pensive face, may be considered as very completely screened, Captain Wentworth should be allowed some credit for the self-command with which he attended to her large fat sighings over the destiny of a son, whom alive nobody had cared for.

(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)

Miss Mills was more than usually pensive when Dora, going to find her, brought her back;—I apprehend, because there was a tendency in what had passed to awaken the slumbering echoes in the caverns of Memory.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)