How to Use melancholia in a Sentence

melancholia

noun
  • Such moods as alienation and melancholia have no place in his films.
    — David Denby, The New Yorker, 16 Jan. 2017
  • The glimpse of her life as a mother and her melancholia come into play later in the show’s run.
    — Yvonne Villarreal, Los Angeles Times, 13 Oct. 2023
  • The best thing to fight off early sunset melancholia is to try to get outside at dusk, even for a few minutes.
    — Kaitlyn Yarborough, Southern Living, 5 Nov. 2025
  • It was used to treat melancholia and, of course, hangovers, presumably due to its high caffeine content.
    — Aleksandra Crapanzano, The Atlantic, 27 Oct. 2025
  • For the vanquished, an inevitable melancholia is tinged with optimism.
    — Robin George Andrews, Scientific American, 3 June 2021
  • Any aggression Madonna feels about her divorce—on this album, at least—is flushed out by melancholia.
    — Christopher Rosa, Glamour, 30 Nov. 2018
  • But these are broken songs, and the person singing them is in a state that fluctuates from euphoria to madness and melancholia.
    — Ernesto Lechner, Rolling Stone, 7 Oct. 2024
  • En route to his nervous breakdown in 1969, a sublime melancholia crept into his playing.
    — Philip Montoro, Chicago Reader, 22 Aug. 2017
  • The exhibition sets out to trace a modern repurposing of melancholia by Black artists.
    — New York Times, 23 June 2022
  • Ray Charles is a very good example of an oxymoron by putting groovy textures and spiritual aspect, but also, joy and melancholia.
    — Lily Moayeri, Billboard, 21 Oct. 2022
  • For those of us who have loved Mann's incredible mix of melancholia and pop mastery for decades, somehow that sentiment is not the least bit surprising.
    — Steve Baltin, Forbes, 10 Nov. 2021
  • There’s some nostalgia and melancholia in Connecticut, naturally, over what might have been.
    — Dom Amore, Hartford Courant, 9 Sep. 2022
  • His story is sad and beautiful; as always, Only Murders cuts the melancholia with flashes of genuine warmth.
    — Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 9 Sep. 2025
  • No, the melancholia that gripped Democrats was rooted in something deeper than wins and losses or control of a particular branch of government.
    — Gilbert Garcia, ExpressNews.com, 6 Nov. 2020
  • Psychotic melancholia sounds horrifying, like a German band that plays an obscure subgenre of death metal.
    — Yusef Roach, Los Angeles Magazine, 31 May 2018
  • Recognising melancholia as a distinct disorder^ improves clinical care and research.
    — Neuroskeptic, Discover Magazine, 5 July 2011
  • The melancholia that courses through this movie is of a piece with its minimalism, notable in the concision of the individual scenes and the overall running time.
    — Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times, 30 Apr. 2021
  • Suffering from a wan melancholia that sits strangely on so strapping a dude, Nick eventually confesses his break-up, which rather ruins the mood of laddish hi-jinks.
    — Jessica Kiang, Variety, 28 Sep. 2023
  • Lana Del Rey doesn’t toy with signs—of American glamour and its decay, of female melancholia and racial desire—so much as consecrate them.
    — Lauren Michele Jackson, The New Yorker, 28 Mar. 2023
  • Its self-lacerating melancholia never dips into self-indulgence, instead digging into the shades of gray that define a person’s bleakest days.
    — Maura Johnston, Rolling Stone, 25 Aug. 2023
  • In totality, Blue Rev is the work of a band that’s moved beyond somewhat standard beachy-dream melancholia to touting heaps of creative currency and more to say.
    — Bobby Olivier, SPIN, 5 Oct. 2022
  • Ronan’s performance grows steadily more luminous as Charlotte’s melancholia recedes and her natural vigor and lust for life reemerge.
    — Justin Chang Film Critic, Los Angeles Times, 12 Nov. 2020
  • And finally, there is the film’s tone, a kind of low-key melancholia that is the opposite of a big, buzzy crime movie and its accompanying social-media traction that streaming services crave.
    — Steven Zeitchik, Washington Post, 27 Sep. 2019
  • The limited series is atmospheric, evoking the melancholia of the not-quite-adult space in which Rooney’s characters usually exist.
    — Shirley Li, The Atlantic, 19 May 2022
  • Those accused of witchcraft all had similar symptoms, including manic melancholia, psychosis, and delirium.
    — Popular Science, 11 Mar. 2020
  • In many ways, Landman is the chillest entry in the Sheridan-verse, which is typically packed with violence, melancholia, and dudely grouchiness.
    — Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 11 Dec. 2024
  • Acedia, the theological version of melancholia, was the medieval view that exhaustion was considered sinful.
    — National Geographic, 19 Aug. 2016
  • Our inability to comprehend the reason for our melancholia pushes us further into our subconscious depths, and manifests as a kind of permanent mourning.
    — Hua Hsu, The New Yorker, 17 July 2019
  • Racial melancholia also turns our attention to how having a proximity to whiteness has levied the unrecognizability of Asian pain and injury.
    — Tim Chan, Rolling Stone, 23 Apr. 2021
  • Yet despite the patriotic trappings, there is a foreboding, a melancholia from the first words spoken by the narrator (later lawyer), a steady, genuine Brian Levi.
    — Joanne Engelhardt, The Mercury News, 15 Mar. 2017

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'melancholia.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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