Definitions

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  • noun Depression, melancholy.

Etymologies

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From French cafard.

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Examples

  • It documents the life of a chronic alcoholic who suffered continually from what he, following the French, called cafard-the cockroach that is a metaphor for overwhelming, debilitating depression.

    Critical Mass Eric Banks 2010

  • It documents the life of a chronic alcoholic who suffered continually from what he, following the French, called cafard-the cockroach that is a metaphor for overwhelming, debilitating depression.

    Critical Mass 2010

  • It documents the life of a chronic alcoholic who suffered continually from what he, following the French, called cafard-the cockroach that is a metaphor for overwhelming, debilitating depression.

    Critical Mass 2010

  • It documents the life of a chronic alcoholic who suffered continually from what he, following the French, called cafard-the cockroach that is a metaphor for overwhelming, debilitating depression.

    Critical Mass Eric Banks 2010

  • "It dissects (a shade too scientifically and cold-bloodedly at times perhaps) the sentiments and emotions associated with attack and defence; the impulses that eventuate in heroism; the alternating super-sensitiveness and callousness of the nerves; fear and the mastery of fear; the 'hope deferred that maketh the heart sick'; the devious stratagems of the terrible 'cafard' (blues)."

    The Jervaise Comedy 1910

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  • The chapter about the cafard and the search for a house with yellow windows is one for which I felt extraordinary empathy; I would love to have written this particularly, but writing such material surely had a certain price attached, and it's known that Cheever went through hell before receiving this vision.

    My Book Meme 2006

  • The chapter about the cafard and the search for a house with yellow windows is one for which I felt extraordinary empathy; I would love to have written this particularly, but writing such material surely had a certain price attached, and it's known that Cheever went through hell before receiving this vision.

    Archive 2006-09-24 2006

Comments

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  • Severe depression or apathy; also, idiomatically, the blues.

    May 12, 2008

  • In the idion of who? Dörmögõ?

    May 12, 2008

  • according to Urquhart, a "dissembling religionary"

    May 21, 2009