unhappiness

nounB2Common in everyday speech and writing · #7,883 of 15,258neutral

Unhappiness is a settled state of not being happy. Deep unhappiness, the unhappiness of the arrangement, express unhappiness.

It is milder and broader than depression and it names a situation as often as a mood — unhappiness at work is a complaint about conditions. Note the three parts: un-, happy and -ness, and that happy first meant lucky.

Definitions of unhappiness

1noununhappinessA settled state of not being happy.B2
“Years of unhappiness in her marriage finally led her to leave.”

unhappiness is a state of mind.

Where it comes from

Un- plus happy plus -ness. Happy comes from hap, chance, so the word first concerned luck rather than mood.

From unhappy + -ness or un- + happiness.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Word Building

Practise this word

unhappiness in the wild

A warm touch meant good luck and fortune, while a cold touch meant unhappiness.
Ovinnik
Anguish (from the Latin angustia "distress") is "extreme unhappiness caused by physical or mental suffering".
Anguish
Later in life, Tolstoy expressed his unhappiness with the book.
Boyhood (novel)
Later in life, Tolstoy expressed his unhappiness with this book and the second in the trilogy, Boyhood.
Youth (Tolstoy novel)
In heroic verse of an Augustan style it discusses the causes of happiness and unhappiness in nations.
The Traveller (poem)

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

← Vocabulary