Weltschmerzn.

1875 J. A. Symonds Renaissance in Italy I. iv. 232 The Weltschmerz did not exist for the men of the Renaissance.

1896 W. Caldwell Schopenhauer's Syst. 523 His philosophy is a study of the Weltschmerz that we all feel at times.

1923 A. Huxley Let. 2 Sept. (1969) 218 I have also been having a..jaundice lying on my liver, which reduced me to a fearful state of weltschmerz and incapacity to do anything.

1935 C. Isherwood Mr. Norris changes Trains ix. 150 ‘What's the matter?’ I asked. ‘Things in general... The state of this wicked world. A touch of Weltschmerz, that's all.’

1947 C. Gray Contingencies iii. 89 The combination of medieval accidia and modern weltschmerz, which we find in his [Liszt's] Hamlet.

1960 C. Geertz Modjokuto vi. 75 He said..the young good ones..die early, as a kind of reward, for it is a good thing to be dead. He spoke happily, not in any Weltschmerz mood.

1965 W. Golding Hot Gates 136 The sadness, the weltschmerz resulting from the constant movement of the ship.

1981 J. D. MacDonald Free Fall in Crimson i. 6 ‘It is like weltschmerz.’ ‘Which, as you have so often told me, is homesickness for a place you have never seen.’