History of the English Word Melancholy

Abstract

Melancholy, a very dynamic word, has in fact grown more abstract with time to the point where now, many may find it hard to separate from depression or sadness. While melancholy is of course very related to depression, its meaning nowadays can mean anything from somberly introspective to nostalgic. Different from the modern day use of depression to describe the psychological illness, melancholy in both its early days and now is often used to denote a specific personality characteristic of someone, but to see how this came about, it is important to look at the word's earliest beginning in ancient Greek.