Synonyms: Sad

A person who has suffered a loss, most often of a family member, is bereaved. Historically, bereaved was used to describe victims of a robbery or other loss. It comes from the Old English beréafian, where réafian means "rob," "plunder," or "spoil."

Bereft comes from bereaved. If you're bereft, you've been robbed, either literally or figuratively: something or someone has been taken from you.

Dejected comes from the Latin verb dejicere, meaning "to throw down."

To be despondent is to have lost confidence or hope. It's a synonym for dejected, above, but not quite as severe as disconsolate, below, or despairing, both of which evoke inconsolable hopelessness.

Dolium is Latin for grief, so to be doleful is to be terribly sad or gloomy, usually after something awful has happened.

Downcast is a straightforward translation of the Latin root for dejected: "thrown down."

Forlorn is a cool word, though it means "hopelessly unhappy." It's a linguistic fossil, the past participle of a verb that has disappeared from the language: forléosan is Old English for "to lose," "to abandon," or "to ruin."

Glum belongs in a group with morose, somber, and wistful: words for a medium-weight sadness rather than overwhelming grief.

Lugubris is a Latin verb meaning "mournful" or "gloomy."

Melancholy was the term used for centuries before clinical depression was identified and categorized along with other mental illnesses. As a result, it has a slightly old-fashioned flavor these days, evoking tragic romances from bygone eras. The word comes from Greek, and literally means "black bile;" the ancients believed that different moods and emotions — and as a result, human health — were regulated by different fluids in the body.

Morose describes a gloomy mood. Like wistful below, there's an element of introversion and thoughtfulness to morose.

Remorse is a feeling of guilty regret that follows doing something wrong, especially if it harmed someone else.

Woe is sorrow, grief, regret, or intense sadness. "Woe is me" is a common refrain in literature, often used ironically today for sarcastic effect. Although woe-be-gone sounds like an emotional cleaning product — like Windex for your soul — to bego is an old-fashioned way of saying "to occupy" or "to inhabit," so woebegone literally means "full of sadness."