WISTFULNESS

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does wistfulness mean? 

• WISTFULNESS (noun)
  The noun WISTFULNESS has 1 sense:

1. a sadly pensive longing

  Familiarity information: WISTFULNESS used as a noun is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• WISTFULNESS (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

A sadly pensive longing

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Hypernyms ("wistfulness" is a kind of...):

hungriness; longing; yearning (prolonged unfulfilled desire or need)

Derivation:

wistful (showing pensive sadness)

 Context examples 

A new wistfulness was in her face, but it was not the wistfulness of hunger.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

Into his eyes leaped a wistfulness and a yearning as promptly as the yearning leaps into the eyes of a starving man at sight of food.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

She looked at him merely with a great wistfulness, but he knew it to be the wistfulness of an equally great hunger.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

It still regarded them with the merciless wistfulness of hunger.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

It looked at them in a strangely wistful way, after the manner of a dog; but in its wistfulness there was none of the dog affection.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

It was a wistfulness bred of hunger, as cruel as its own fangs, as merciless as the frost itself.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

She had snarled as she sprang away, baring her white fangs to their roots, all her wistfulness vanishing, being replaced by a carnivorous malignity that made him shudder.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

You ain't got me yet! he cried, savagely shaking his fist at the hungry beasts; and at the sound of his voice the whole circle was agitated, there was a general snarl, and the she-wolf slid up close to him across the snow and watched him with hungry wistfulness.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

We were in the same Senior Society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.

(The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald)