Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- adjective Directed downward.
- adjective Low in spirits; depressed. synonym: depressed.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun In ship-building, a duct or trunk with a cowl or hood at its upper end, arranged to drive air down into the interior of a vessel.
- Cast or directed downward: as, a downcast eye or look.
- Hence Depressed; dejected: as, a down-cast spirit.
- In mining, descending.
- noun A downward look: generally implying sadness or pensiveness.
- noun In mining, the ventilating shaft down which the air passes in circulating through a mine.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- adjective Cast downward; directed to the ground, from bashfulness, modesty, dejection, or guilt.
- adjective depressed; dispirited; dejected; -- of people.
- noun Downcast or melancholy look.
- noun (Mining) A ventilating shaft down which the air passes in circulating through a mine.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- adjective of eyes Looking downwards.
- adjective of a person Feeling
despondent . - noun computing A
cast fromsupertype tosubtype . - noun obsolete A
melancholy look . - noun mining A ventilating shaft down which the air passes in circulating through a mine.
- verb transitive, obsolete To cast or throw up; to turn upward.
- verb transitive, Scotland To taunt; to reproach; to upbraid.
- verb transitive, computing To
cast fromsupertype tosubtype .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- adjective directed downward
- noun a ventilation shaft through which air enters a mine
- adjective filled with melancholy and despondency
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Not only am I Catholic, but I'm actually a season ticket holder of the Nationals, and I'm kind of downcast right now.
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That song makes me think of post-climactic film cuts of a movie, maybe a love story or a sad story about traveling, and "That's" is playing and we see snippets of the daily lives of two or more characters and they're all kind of downcast and mundane-looking.
kinaesthesia Diary Entry kinaesthesia 2000
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"We are Eeyore," she said, referring to the downcast donkey in the Winnie the Pooh stories, and then offering an imitation of him: " 'We'll never make it; we'll never get out of here; it is horrible; we're losing; it's over.'
NYT > Home Page By MARK LANDLER 2012
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Their eyes are downcast, weighted by thick, extravagantly long false eyelashes.
New York Fashion Week 2011: Showmanship by Michael Kors, Thom Browne, Derek Lam 2011
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And look at the eyes on the star, they are looking directly at the figure in front of it, not just ahead, but downcast at the small huddled figure.
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In fact, if anything, I left the conversation feeling more downcast than encouraged.
Alan Gottlieb: Are Researchers and Policymakers Oil and Water? Alan Gottlieb 2011
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In fact, if anything, I left the conversation feeling more downcast than encouraged.
Alan Gottlieb: Are Researchers and Policymakers Oil and Water? Alan Gottlieb 2011
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But ever the optimist, sitting in London where Mr. Pépy is visiting for a series of meetings, he refuses to be downcast.
On a fast track to the future William Lyons 2011
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At some point, the one who was primarily confronting me looked away, downcast, and began to curse under his breath.
The Volokh Conspiracy » A Crime to Repeatedly Insult a Minor 2010
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Throughout the ceremony, which lasted an hour and a half, both bride and groom wore demure expressions, their eyes mostly downcast.
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