pensive

pensive
    adj 1: deeply or seriously thoughtful; "Byron lives on not only
           in his poetry, but also in his creation of the 'Byronic
           hero' - the persona of a brooding melancholy young man";
           [syn: {brooding}, {broody}, {contemplative},
           {meditative}, {musing}, {pensive}, {pondering},
           {reflective}, {ruminative}]
    2: showing pensive sadness; "the sensitive and wistful response
       of a poet to the gentler phases of beauty" [syn: {pensive},
       {wistful}]
    

Pensive \Pen"sive\, a. [F. pensif, fr. penser to think, fr. L.
   pensare to weigh, ponder, consider, v. intens. fr. pendere to
   weigh. See {Pension}, {Poise}.]
   1. Thoughtful, sober, or sad; employed in serious reflection;
      given to, or favorable to, earnest or melancholy musing.
      [1913 Webster]

            The pensive secrecy of desert cell.   --Milton.
      [1913 Webster]

            Anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed. --Pope.
      [1913 Webster]

   2. Expressing or suggesting thoughtfulness with sadness; as,
      pensive numbers. --Prior.
      [1913 Webster]
    

82 Moby Thesaurus words for "pensive":
      absent, absentminded, absorbed, abstracted, atrabiliar,
      atrabilious, bemused, blue, brooding, castle-building, cogitative,
      cognitive, concentrating, concentrative, conceptive, conceptual,
      conceptualized, contemplating, contemplative, daydreaming,
      daydreamy, deliberating, deliberative, dreaming, dreamy, drowsing,
      ecstatic, elsewhere, engrossed, excogitating, faraway, funky,
      grave, half-awake, ideative, in a reverie, in a trance,
      in the clouds, introspective, lost, lost in thought, meditating,
      meditative, melancholic, melancholy, mental, mooning, moonraking,
      museful, musing, napping, nodding, noetic, oblivious,
      pipe-dreaming, pondering, prehensive, preoccupied, rapt,
      reflecting, reflective, ruminant, ruminating, ruminative, sad,
      saddened, serious, sober, somewhere else, speculative, stargazing,
      taken up, thinking, thought, thoughtful, transported, tristful,
      unconscious, wistful, withdrawn, woolgathering,
      wrapped in thought