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Maudlin vs Despondent - What's the difference?

maudlin | despondent |

As adjectives the difference between maudlin and despondent

is that maudlin is affectionate or sentimental in an effusive, tearful, or foolish manner, especially because of drunkenness while despondent is in low spirits from loss of hope or courage.

As a noun maudlin

is (obsolete|christianity) the magdalene; (mary magdalene).

maudlin

English

Noun

(en noun)
  • (obsolete, Christianity) The Magdalene; (Mary Magdalene).
  • * c. 1400 , (trans.), The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ :
  • for alle they wor?chipden hir ?ouereynly / as worthy was / but ?pecially Mawdelayne / that wolde neuere departe fro hir.
  • * 1653 , (Nicholas Culpeper), The English Physician Enlarged , Folio Society 2007, p. 186:
  • Common Maudlin have somewhat long and narrow leaves, snipped about the edges.
  • (obsolete) A Magdalene house; a brothel.
  • Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Affectionate or sentimental in an effusive, tearful, or foolish manner, especially because of drunkenness.
  • *around 1900 , O. Henry,
  • He was a drunkard, and had not known it. What he had fondly imagined was a pleasant exhilaration had been maudlin intoxication.
  • Extravagantly or excessively sentimental; mawkish, self-pitying.
  • *1961 ,
  • ''On the rebound one passes into tears and pathos. Maudlin tears. I almost prefer the moments of agony. These are at least clean and honest. But the bath of self-pity, the wallow, the loathsome sticky-sweet pleasure of indulging it — that disgusts me.
  • (obsolete) Tearful, lachrymose.
  • Anagrams

    *

    despondent

    English

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • In low spirits from loss of hope or courage.
  • *
  • *:Thanks to that penny he had just spent so recklessly [on a newspaper] he would pass a happy hour, taken, for once, out of his anxious, despondent , miserable self. It irritated him shrewdly to know that these moments of respite from carking care would not be shared with his poor wife, with careworn, troubled Ellen.
  • Synonyms

    * despairing * disconsolate * disheartened * dejected * downcast * gloomy * miserable * sad

    Antonyms

    * cheerful * hopeful