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Wistful Has a Wishful History
We see you there, dear reader, gazing silently up at the moon, heart aching to know the history of wistful, as if it could be divined on the lunar surface. And we’d like to ease your melancholy by telling you that the knowledge you seek—nay, pine for—is closer at hand. But the etymology of wistful, while intriguing, is not entirely clear. It’s thought that the word is a combination of wistly, a now-obsolete word meaning “intently” and, perhaps, the similar-sounding wishful. Wistly, in turn, may have come from whistly, an old term meaning “silently” or “quietly.” What’s more certain is that our modern wistful is a great word to describe someone full of pensive yearning, or something inspiring such yearning.
Examples of wistful in a Sentence
EW.com, 19 Feb. 2025
After his reelection, in another interview with TIME, Trump appeared to be somewhat wistful that his last campaign was, seemingly, behind him.
—Chad De Guzman, TIME, 14 Feb. 2025
Writer/director Joshua Woodcock’s romantic charmer is both wistful and sweet.
—Randy Myers, The Mercury News, 13 Feb. 2025
The second intermezzo had the underlying character of a waltz, both less wistful and more playful than the first.
—Brandon Taylor, The Atlantic, 4 Jan. 2025
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Cite this Entry
“Wistful.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wistful. Accessed 27 Feb. 2025.
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