morose

What it means

1. Sullen, gloomy; showing a brooding ill humour.

   If there is any boy or man who loves to be melancholy and morose, and who cannot enter with kindly sympathy into the regions of fun, let me seriously advise him to shut my book and put it away. It is not meant for him.

   1857, R. M. Ballantyne, The Coral Island

   1 more example

   My skin is cold / Transfusion with somebody / Morose and old / Drop into fruitless dying / It was tempting and bared / The whoring angel rising / Now burning prayers / My silent time of losing / My foes, they can't destroy my body / Colliding slow, like life itself

   1996, “10's”, in The Great Southern Trendkill, performed by Pantera

   Synonyms: melancholy, sulky, crabby, glum, grouchy, gruff, moody, glum

In a sentence

If there is any boy or man who loves to be melancholy and morose, and who cannot enter with kindly sympathy into the regions of fun, let me seriously advise him to shut my book and put it away. It is not meant for him.

1857, R. M. Ballantyne, The Coral Island

Where it comes from

1. Latinmōrōsus“particular, scrupulous, fastidious, self-willed, wayward, capricious, fretful, peevish”
2. Frenchmorose
3. Englishmorose

From French morose, from Latin mōrōsus (“particular, scrupulous, fastidious, self-willed, wayward, capricious, fretful, peevish”), from mōs (“way, custom, habit, self-will”). See moral.