Word of the Day

Word of the Day for Friday, February 15, 2008 (
from dictionary.com)

ennui \on-WEE\, noun:

A feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction arising from lack of interest; boredom.

He glanced at his heavily laden bookshelves. Nothing there appealed to him. The ennui seemed to have settled into his very bones.

--Alison Burkhardt, on the weather, "She heaved a deep sigh of ennui."
-- Amanda Quick, With This Ring
He was often off sick or playing hooky and suffered from a kind of ennui, a mixture of listlessness and willful melancholy.
-- Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan (translated by Barbara Bray)
Yet if she felt anything it was ennui, . . . the grey sky and the cold wind obliterating every impulse she might have felt to seek comfort in another climate, another landscape.
-- Anita Brookner, Falling Slowly
He was ashamed and unhappy, adrift with a senseless ennui.
-- Brian Moynahan, Rasputin: The Saint Who Sinned
Ennui is from the French, from Old French enui, "annoyance," from enuier, "to annoy, to bore," from the Latin phrase in odium, "in hatred or dislike."