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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
Joan MacDonald, Forbes.com, 20 June 2025
Is that even enough time to start feeling wistful about it?
—David Sims, The Atlantic, 13 June 2025
Its music and words incorporated the wistful hopefulness that personified so much of Wilson’s art.
—Peter Larsen, Oc Register, 11 June 2025
The next look leaves the dungeon behind for a more wistful trip into some witchy woods.
—Chris Willman, Variety, 8 June 2025
See All Example Sentences for wistful
Cite this Entry
“Wistful.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wistful. Accessed 4 Jul. 2025.
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