Other forms: depressions
Depression is a lasting heaviness that drains meaning from things. Clinical depression, suffer from depression, treat depression.
It is not sadness: the defining features are loss of interest and of pleasure lasting weeks, and people with it often say they feel nothing rather than feel sad. It is treatable and most people recover. The word also means a hollow in a surface, and an economic slump. Note that the Latin means pressing down.
1noundepressionA lasting heaviness that drains meaning from things.
“After losing his job, he went through a long depression and hardly left the house.”
2nounhollowA hollow in a surface.
“Rainwater collected in a small depression in the rock.”
depression is a condition, or a hollow.
Latin depressio comes from deprimere, to press down — de plus premere, to press. Press, express and print come from the same pressing.
Latin
dēpressiō
Old French
depression
Middle English
depression
English, today
depression
From Middle English depression, depressioun, from Old French depression, from Latin dēpressiō. Equivalent to depress + ion.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA