disquietude

/dɪsˈkwaɪɪˌtud/

Other forms: disquietudes

Sometimes, maybe for no reason at all, you might become agitated with a feeling of restless agitation. This feeling is a sense of disquietude, an edgy feeling that something in your universe is out of order.

If you break down the word disquietude you come to its root word, quiet, which means still or noiseless. The dis- prefix means "not," giving it the opposite meaning, and the ending -tude makes it a state of being. So the word literally means "state of being unquiet." For example, it was said in the Washington Post that the 19th-20th-century artist Edward Hopper's paintings present a picture of the disquietude, or uneasiness, of American life.

Definitions of disquietude

1. noun

   feelings of anxiety that make you tense and irritable
   synonyms: edginess, inquietude, uneasiness

   types:

   willies

   feelings of uneasiness

   type of:

   anxiety

   a vague unpleasant emotion that is experienced in anticipation of some (usually ill-defined) misfortune