• morose •
Pronunciation: mê-ros • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Adjective
Meaning: Sullen, gloomy, dour, displaying a brooding humor.
Notes: Today's adjective is softer than "dejected" or "miserable"; it is almost a pleasant mood. It comes with an adverb, morosely and two nouns, a clunker, moroseness, and a more palatable morosity.
In Play: This word generally refers to a mild sadness: "Wally had a pretty good voice and a penchant for morose self-analysis set to a strum-along guitar." Some event usually sets the stage for morosity: "After her boyfriend left her, April Showers became morose for several weeks."
Word History: Today's Good Word was borrowed from French morose "gloomy; moribund, inactive", inherited from Latin morosus "wayward, peevish, capricious". Many etymologists associate this word with mos, moris "habit, fashion; caprice, humor", which would make it a cousin of moral and mood, but of unknown origin. I think it might have originated as mor-/mer- "die, death" + -s, a popular adjective suffix, conceivably meaning "-like", in other words, a PIE word originally meaning "death-like". If so, this PIE word was popular among IE families, e.g. Sanskrit marati "dies", Greek moros "fate" and mortos "person, mortal", Latin mors, mortis "death", Lithuanian mirti "to die", Latvian mirt "to die", Russian smert' "death", as in Smersh, from smert' shpionam "death to spies", Welsh marw "to die, dead", Breton marvel "mortal", from archaic marv "death". We see the Latin root in many English borrowings, like mortuary, mortal, and mortify. (Lest we make Eileen Opiolka morose, let's all thank her for bringing today's curious Good Word.)
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