saturnine
Adjective Satellite
- bitter or scornful; - Oscar Wilde
- "the face was saturnine and swarthy, and the sensual lips...twisted with disdain"
- showing a brooding ill humor; ; ; ; ; ; - Bruce Bliven
- "a saturnine, almost misanthropic young genius"
Adj
- Of a person: having a tendency to be cold and gloomy
- Of a setting: depressing, dull, gloomy.
- Of, pertaining to, or containing lead (which was symbolically associated with the planet Saturn by alchemists).
- Caused or affected by lead poisoning (saturnism).
- Pertaining to the astrological influence of the planet Saturn; having the characteristics of a person under such influence (see sense 1).
Origin / Etymology
From Middle English saturnine, satournine, satournyne, saturnin, saturnyn, saturnyne (“pertaining to or under the influence of the planet Saturn; line on the palm of the hand associated with Saturn”), from Old French saturnine, saturnin (modern French saturnin (“of, pertaining to, resembling or containing lead, plumbic”)), or directly from its etymon Medieval Latin Sāturnīnus, from Sāturnus (“the Roman god Saturn; the planet Saturn”) + -īnus (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’); analysable as Saturn + -ine. The English word is cognate with Italian saturnino (“saturnine”), Portuguese saturnino (“melancholy, saturnine; pertaining to the planet Saturn”), Spanish saturnino (“melancholy, saturnine; pertaining to the planet Saturn”).
Sense 1 (“having a tendency to be cold, bitter, gloomy, etc.”) refers to the fact that individuals born under the astrological influence of the planet Saturn were believed to have that disposition.
Synonyms
dark, dour, glowering, glum, moody, morose, sour, sullen, atrabiliary, atrabilious, bleak, blitheless, blue, bummed out, chapfallen, cheerless, chopfallen, comfortless, crestfallen, cut up, damp, dejected, depressed, depressing, desolate, despondent, dire, disconsolate, disgruntled, disheartened, dismal, doleful, dolesome, down, down in the dumps, down in the mouth, downcast, downhearted, downsome, drear, drearisome, dreary, dreich, dull, elegiac, elegious, forlorn, gayless, gloomsome, gloomy, gray, grief-stricken, grieving, grim, heartsick, heartsore, heavy-hearted, inconsolable, infelicitous, jawfallen, joyless, lachrymose, lack-laughter, lamentful, leaden, low, low-spirited, lugubrious, lumpish, melancholic, melancholy, mirthless, miserable, mopey, mournful, no joke, passionate, plaintive, querulous, sad, saddened, saturnine, shattered, solemn, somber, sombre, sorrow-ridden, sorrowful, sorrowsome, spiritless, sunless, threnetic, threnetical, triste, tristful, uncheerful, uncheery, unconsolable, unhappy, unlively, unmerry, wintry, wistful, woe, woebegone, woeful, wretched
Antonyms
bright, cheerful, cheery, dejected, depressed, discontented, dissatisfied, gloomy, jovial, miserable, pleasant, sad, unhappy
Scrabble Score: 9
saturnine: valid Scrabble (US) TWL Wordsaturnine: valid Scrabble Word in Merriam-Webster MW Dictionary
saturnine: valid Scrabble Word in International Collins CSW Dictionary