Phrase guide

mal du siècle

noun · 1 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

Each Play button uses your device's default local English voice, or a natural local fallback. The selected voice name appears after playback. This is synthesized speech, not a source recording.

  • /ˌmæl.duˈsjɛk.l(ə)/

1

noun

Meaning 1

Apathy and world-weariness, involving pessimism towards the current state of the world, often along with nostalgia for the past, originally in the context of French Romanticism; Weltschmerz.

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: uncountable

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: none provided

Antonyms: none provided

History

Etymology

Borrowed from French mal du siècle (literally “disease of the century”).