morose

morose¹ sullen, gloomy

Etymology

The word for gloomy and sullen is borrowed from Latin mōrōsus (“hard to please, peevish, fastidious, exacting”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} formed from mōs (“manner, custom, habit; self-will, caprice”) and -ōsus, the source of -ose.^[2][4][7][8] Hoad takes mōs here in the special sense "humour, fancy",^[5] and Klein glosses the Latin adjective literally as "of (bad) manners";^[9] Etymonline contrasts English manners, which by itself means good manners.^[3] The same noun is the source of moral.^[3][4][5] The American Heritage Dictionary places it under the Indo-European root Proto-Indo-European *mē-.^[6] French morose is recorded from 1618 for a gloomy, glum person.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of people: sullen, gloomy, sour-tempered, unsociable: 1565, in Thomas Cooper's Latin–English Thesaurus.^[2][4][8] Etymonline dates the word to the 1530s,^[3] and the Shorter Oxford to late Middle English, with an early sense "slow, deliberate; painstaking, scrupulous" that lasted into the late 17th century.^[10]

Semantic evolution

Skeat distinguished a good sense of the Latin word, "scrupulous", and a bad one, "peevish";^[11] in English the word has had the sense "sullen, gloomy" from its first record.^[2] The sense "scrupulous, painstaking" appears only in the 1690s.^[2][10] From 1694 the word was extended to things,^[2] and in 1791 to outlooks and opinions, meaning pessimistic.^[2] Johnson (1755) defined it as "sour of temper; peevish; sullen".^[12] As a noun, the morose, morose people as a class, it is recorded from 1620 but is now rare.^[2]

Timeline

• 1565 – of people, sullen, gloomy, sour-tempered.^[2][4]
• 1620 – noun, the morose, morose people.^[2]
• 1652 – of a thing, intractable (obsolete).^[2]
• 1694 – in extended use, of things.^[2]
• 1695 – scrupulous, painstaking (obsolete).^[2][10]
• 1791 – of an outlook or opinion, pessimistic.^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. Having a sullen, gloomy and unsociable temper; ill-tempered: He sat morose and silent through dinner.^[8][13][2]
2. Of an outlook or mood, gloomy or pessimistic.^[2][13]
3. (obsolete) Scrupulous, painstaking.^[2][10]

Word family

• morosely
• moroseness
• morosity
• unmorose

morose² lingering (theology)

Etymology

The word for a thought sinfully dwelt upon is borrowed from Latin morōsus, with a short o, recorded from the late 2nd century AD, from mora (“delay”) and -ōsus.^[2] Thomas Aquinas already used Latin morosa delectatio as an established term and connected it with mora and with immoror (“to linger upon”).^[2] Trench and Skeat note that in medieval Latin the adjective was associated with mora rather than with mōs.^[14][11]

Earliest recorded meaning

Of a thought or feeling, wrongly or sinfully prolonged or dwelt upon: 1645, in Henry Hammond's Practical Catechism.^[2][14]

Semantic evolution

In the treatises of Christian ethics, Trench explains, the word named the sin of lingering on impure or malignant thoughts instead of rejecting them at once, and English divines used it while scholastic theology still had influence;^[14] he quotes Hammond's "all morose thoughts, that is, delaying, dwelling", and Robert South on "the morose dwelling of the thoughts upon an injury".^[14] Trench adds that by his time the sense had been entirely given up,^[14] and the OED calls it now rare.^[2] A Roman-law sense, chargeable with undue delay in pressing a claim, is recorded once, in 1875.^[2] The phrase is paralleled by French délectation morose (1863).^[2]

Timeline

• 1645 – of a thought, sinfully dwelt upon.^[2][14]
• 1662 – morose thoughts, in Nicholson's Exposition of the Catechism.^[14]
• 1875 – in Roman law, guilty of undue delay (obsolete).^[2]

Meanings

Adjective

1. (theology, rare) Of a thought or feeling, sinfully lingered or dwelt upon, as in morose thoughts.^[2][14]