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Ennui

Psychology
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Listless boredom and dissatisfaction arising from lack of interest or meaning.

Detailed Definition
Ennui is the hallmark of existential weariness, often found in decadent or modern poetry. It manifests through flat tones, stalled action, and images of emptiness or repetition. Poets like Baudelaire or Eliot use ennui to diagnose cultural malaise and spiritual aridity. It becomes a lens for critiquing luxury, routine, or failed idealism, and its suffocating weight often provokes desperate gestures or ironic detachment.
Example
Example in poetry:
Ennui in Sylvia Plath's sonnet "Ennui" explores sophisticated hopelessness; Charles Baudelaire's "Spleen 2" describes ennui swelling into immortality; Luis G. Dato's "Ennui" speaks of forgetting care in the wilderness of cities; Paul Verlaine's "Apathy" portrays ennui in a golden, languid style; The poem "L'Homme de l'Ennui" expresses forlorn wandering; Plath wrote "L'ennui" beside a passage in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.
Additional Notes
Ennui is the hallmark of existential weariness, often found in decadent or modern poetry, manifesting through flat tones, stalled action, and images of emptiness or repetition. Poets like Baudelaire or Eliot use ennui to diagnose cultural malaise and spiritual aridity. In teaching, distinguish ennui from boredom: ennui carries a more refined, listless dissatisfaction linked to privilege or decadence, while boredom is more mundane. Ennui often provokes desperate gestures or ironic detachment, making it a rich term for analyzing modernist and symbolist poetry. Students should examine how poets convey ennui through languid rhythms and sparse imagery.
Also Known As
Boredom lethargy tedium apathy listlessness
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