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dejected

UK/dɪˈdʒɛktəd/
adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #12,638 of 15,258neutral

Dejected means cast down after a disappointment. Shoulders, eyes and voice all lower than they were.

It describes appearance as much as feeling, so a dejected figure walking away is a whole picture. It is a moment rather than a condition, which separates it from depressed, a clinical word that should be kept for the illness. Sport uses it constantly for losing teams. The literal Latin sense is thrown down, which is exactly the posture the word describes.

Definitions of dejected

  1. 1adjectivedejectedSad and dispirited after a disappointment.C1

    “He came off the field looking thoroughly dejected.”

Where it comes from

  1. Latin

    dēiectus

  2. Old French

    dejeter

  3. English

    deject

  4. English, today

    dejected

Built from

  • deiciō · Latin — to throw down
  • dē- · Latin — from, down from
  • iaciō · Latin — to throw

From deject + -ed. deject comes from Old French dejeter, from Latin dēiectus, past participle of deiciō (“to throw down”), from dē- (“from, down from”) + iaciō (“to throw”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove, Moods & Relationships

First appears in chapter 22 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

dejected in the wild

  • Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) attempts to console the dejected Worf, and becomes the aggressor in a romantic scene between the two.

    Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Places

  • Having suffered a decisive defeat at the Battle of Chuquinga, he became dejected, fell ill, and died.

    Alonso de Alvarado

  • Decker looked dejected, unable to keep up all the way through the turn but clearly ahead of Yekaterina Podkopayeva who was battling to stay ahead of Ravilya Agletdinova.

    1983 World Championships in Athletics – Women's 1500 metres

  • Catocala dejecta, the dejected underwing, is a moth of the family Erebidae.

    Catocala dejecta

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the iaciō family

subjectobject

dejected — used about once every 15,236 pages · #12,638 · point at the bar for the others