Learn English – Difference between ‘melancholic’ and adjective ‘melancholy’

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Is there any difference in meaning between the adjectives melancholy and melancholic? Can they be used interchangeably?

The Oxford Learner's Dictionaries define them as follows:

melancholy (adjective):

very sad or making you feel sadness

SYNONYM mournful, sombre

  • melancholy thoughts/memories
  • The melancholy song died away.

melancholic (adjective):

(old-fashioned or literary)
feeling or expressing sadness,
especially when the sadness is like an illness

Best Answer

Long ago, melancholy was a noun, and only melancholic an adjective.

In recent centuries, melancholy has taken on an adjectival sense meaning having a feeling of the noun melancholy.

Back in 1713, Alexander Pope wrote in his rather lengthily titled

The narrative of Dr. Robert Norris, concerning the strange and deplorable frenzy of Mr. John Denn - - - an officer of the custom house : being an exact account of all that past betwixt the said patient and the doctor till this present day ; and a full vindication of himself and his proceedings from the extravagant reports of the said Mr. John Denn.

the following sentence, in which the word is clearly used adjectivally:

The person I have at present cause to complain of, is indeed in very melancholy circumstances, it having pleased God to deprive him of his senses, which may extenuate the crime in him.

Pope is there using the adverb verb to modify melancholy, which makes it an adjective not an attributive noun.

Would it have made any difference if he had used melancholic there? No, not really.

However, and for whatever reason I cannot say, the use of very melancholy has plummeted over the past two centuries, per this ngram:

ngram of very melancholy

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