: a feeling of weariness and dissatisfaction : boredom
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The French loanword ennui comes from the very same Late Latin word that gave us annoy — inodiare ("to make loathsome"). We borrowed ennui several centuries after absorbing annoy into the language. Ennui deals more with boredom than irritation - and a somewhat specific sort of boredom at that. It generally refers to the feeling of jadedness that can result from living a life of too much ease. The poet Charles Lloyd described it well in his 1823 Stanzas to Ennui when he referred to that world-weary sensation as a "soul-destroying fiend" which visits with its "pale unrest / The chambers of the human breast / Where too much happiness hath fixed its home."
When the antiproton was discovered … it sent a wave of ennui through the physics community. Not that its discovery was unimportant, but on the basis of Dirac's theory, everybody expected it. Roger G. Newton, The Truth of Science, 1997Chauncey and I were keen enough about our aesthetic solution to the ennui of war to try to proselytize others. He organized discussion groups with the crew; I took volunteers to visit landmarks … Louis Auchincloss, "Atlantic War,"in Authors at Sea, ed. Robert Shenk, 1997The attendant outside was standing on tennis balls, exercising the soles of her feet, her body swaying back and forth with the ennui of jelly. Edna O'Brien, New Yorker, 17 June 1991Thus the days of life are consumed, one by one, without an object beyond the present moment; ever flying from the ennui of that, yet carrying it with us … Thomas Jefferson, in a letter dated 7 Feb. 1787Thomas Jefferson: Writings, 1984 the kind of ennui that comes from having too much time on one's hands and too little will to find something productive to do
Recent Examples on the WebIn that moment, what might have been another business-as-usual desert war doc — with routine patrols, precisely targeted drone strikes and soldiers expressing their ennui — shifted to something audiences hadn’t seen before. Peter Debruge, Variety, 7 Sep. 2022 Do not be alarmed if your sandwich triggers a wave of ennui. Ryan Chapman, The New Yorker, 15 July 2022 Suddenly the ennui of that field trip began to lift.Outside Online, 8 Oct. 2021 Most up-tempo Bleachers numbers are straightforward rock songs—four or five chords, a shout-along refrain, maybe a saxophone solo—about love and loss, ennui and transcendence, and, more often than not, New Jersey, where Antonoff grew up. Andrew Marantz, The New Yorker, 16 May 2022 Similar to dating apps like the League, Raya wards off the ennui of endless scrolling by limiting the number of profiles users can check out each day. Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker, 15 Oct. 2021 But her ennui shouldn’t be mistaken for blandness or meekness. Angie Han, The Hollywood Reporter, 21 June 2022 Never mind that the project is just a rich man’s folly, something that an 80-year-old millionaire decided to do in a bout of post-birthday ennui. David Fear, Rolling Stone, 16 June 2022 As weeks turn into months, a kind of ennui advects Rose’s life like fog through a field — a slow transition that DP Hélène Louvart expertly maneuvers. Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter, 27 May 2022 See More
Word History
Etymology
French, from Old French enui annoyance, from enuier to vex, from Late Latin inodiare to make loathsome — more at annoy