Definition of "tristness"

Beneath the snowy turban, which adorns her head, what pathos seems to dress her brows; what silent, yet what speaking, tristness, highly touched!

1797 October, “Art. 67. A History or Description, general and circumstantial, of Burghley House, the Seat of the Right Honorable the Earl of Exeter. […]”, in The Monthly Review; or Literary Journal, Enlarged: […], volume XXIV, London: […] R[alph] Griffiths; and sold by T[homas] Becket, […], page 235

Notwithstanding the tristness of the town, there are many visitors during the Summer who come for quiet and economy.

1844, Charles Wilkes, “Jaunt into Pennsylvania”, in William James Morgan, David B. Tyler, Joye L. Leonhart, Mary F. Loughlin, editors, Autobiography of Rear Admiral Charles Wilkes, U. S. Navy 1798–1877, Washington, D.C.: Naval History Division, Department of the Navy/U.S. Government Printing Office, published 1978, page 570

He who has lashed, with such biting keenness, the poets and the critics of his day; and laughed to scorn, alike the metaphysical poetics of an “In Memoriam,” the morbid tristness of “A Life-drama,” the transcendental theosophy of a “Festus,” and all the vagaries of a Carlyle, a Ruskin, or a Gilfillan: must be assumed to offer something which he, at least, believes to approach more nearly the true requisites of poetic perfection.

1856 November, D. W., “[Reviews.] Bothwell: A Poem in six parts. By W. Edmondstoune Aytoun, […]. Leaves of Grass. […]”, in The Canadian Journal of Industry, Science, and Art: […], new series, volume I, number VI, Toronto, Ont.: […] [F]or the Canadian Institute, by Lovell and Gibson, […], page 541

Kate was delighted with this proposal, and the business of packing and preparing seemed to dispel much of the tristness which had possessed her of late, and Wycherly was happy again.

1864, Mark Lemon, “Quite a Business Chapter.—Cecil Starts on the Road to Ruin.”, in Loved at Last. A Story., volume II, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], page 197

“Her Majesty,” he says, “still dresses with exquisite simplicity, her toilet being toned and tinted in harmony with the tristness of the hour. Long live the brave and beautiful Empress Eugenie!”

1870 November 5, “The Last Straw”, in Every Saturday: An Illustrated Journal of Choice Reading, new series, volume I, number 45, Boston, Mass.: Fields, Osgood, and Company, page 707, column 1

The forlorn condition of the girl; her gesture, which seemed full of sadness; the silent fall of leaves; the tristness of the autumn woods, overcame Miss Lascelles; and as she walked silently beside me, with her head bent, I saw that she was crying.

1887, Frank Barrett, chapter IV, in The Great Hesper, New York, N.Y.: John W. Lovell Company, […], page 24

IN the country and city where Ovidius Naso wrote his Tristia there is a Minister of Public Instruction, the Honourable Signor Nasi by name, who seeks to remove the tristness of the Italian teachers’ lot by requiring them to study and teach their pupils The Duty of Man, by Mazzini. Such was the stone offered to the Italian schoolmasters for bread, and they seem to digest it badly. For, if one may trust the news in L’Européen, “these unhappy pariahs of education, whom successive governments have fed with promises and fine words, are losing their patience at last.”

1903 October, “[By Many Hands.] A Teachers’ Strike.”, in The Practical Teacher: A Monthly Magazine and Review for the School-Room and the Study, volume XXIV, number 4, London, New York, N.Y.: […], page 170, column 1

All this time, Colonel Ireton was making a forced march across the Darling Range, that low cordillera unsurpassable in tristness, barrenness and steepness.

1909, C[harles] H. Kirmess [pseudonym; Frank Fox], “Civil War in Australia and Its Inevitable Result”, in The Australian Crisis, London: The Walter Scott Publishing Company Limited, part III (Birth-pangs of Twentieth Century Nationhood), page 267

This period of mourning was, however, after a time relieved of much of its tristness as far as the King was concerned, by the lively society of his mistresses, with whom the Princesses appeared to have associated in perfect harmony.

, Henry Curties, “The Year of Mourning”, in A Forgotten Prince of Wales, London: Everett & Co., Ltd., […], pages 285–286

Its haunting, occult bewitchment yearns and throbs in the songs of many poets, and from these wells of wonder and vistas of high romance which California opens for the thirsty souls of the children of America our literature is being enriched—think of Miller, of certain stanzas of Markham, of songs by Ina Coolbrith, of the verbal splendour and great imagination of George Sterling, of the murmurous monotone, so full of elegaic tristness, of Charles Warren Stoddard, and of the lyrical though sad ecstasy of Nora May French.

1918, Michael Williams, “A Testament of Egotism”, in The Book of the High Romance: A Spiritual Autobiography, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, part II (The Homeward Way), chapter section 1 (California), page 210

The boat glided away with the purring of a powerful motor, and in a moment had swept smoothly round a bend, and there was left only the diminishing roar of its engine to tell of its existence. Presently, for the boat was a flyer, that was gone too; and upon the waters the tristness and silence of eventide came wholly into their own.

1921, Henry Oyen, chapter I, in Twisted Trails, New York, N.Y.: George H. Doran Company, page 12

This monotonous emotionalism, which makes an unmistakable impression and gives his pictures an ascetic, pathological character, has its counterpart in the landscape, rising up like a wall behind the figures, and the bare tristness of it seems attuned to the stunted, dwarfish human beings.

1963, Max J[akob] Friedländer, “The Origins of Landscape in the Fifteenth Century”, in R[ichard] F[rancis] C[arrington] Hull, transl., Landscape, Portrait, Still-Life: Their Origin and Development, New York, N.Y.: Schocken Books, page 45

I think I have somewhere met with the observation that nobody ever leaves Paris but with a degree of tristness.The original, unedited version has paris and tristeness.

2006 , Abigail Adams, “[Thomas Jefferson Described by His Contemporaries] Abigail Adams to Thomas Jefferson, London, June 6, 1785”, in John P. Kaminski, editor, The Quotable Jefferson, Princeton, N.J., Oxford: Princeton University Press, page 448