A boy told me this weekend that "wistful" is his very favorite word. He might have been lying because he was in an act of persuasion, but let us humor him and pretend he was in earnest.
Our AHD defines wistful as "full of wishful yearning" and "pensively sad; melancholy." It lists the etymology as obsolete, noting it comes from, probably, wistly, which means intently.
The OED notes, "in early use mainly poetical" and lists its first usage to be cf. 1613-1616.
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"an act of persuasion"
ReplyDelete--he sounds like a gentleman caller. lol
Your phrasing might be a little confusing: it's not that the etymology itself is obsolete; it's that the word is probably derived from the obsolete word wistly.
ReplyDelete