Note: Our Sixth Annual 15-Second Vocabulary Video Challenge is underway. It will run until Feb. 18.
malaise mə-ˈlāz , ma-, -ˈlez noun
: physical discomfort (as mild sickness or depression)
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The word malaise has appeared in 128 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on Jan. 29 in “‘The Wild Pear Tree’ Review: A Gambler and a Writer at Odds” by A.O. Scott:
“The Wild Pear Tree,” Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s latest film, shares its title with a manuscript written by its protagonist, a restless young man named Sinan. The book is a collection of short pieces, quasi- or semi-fictional but based in reality, touching on aspects of life in the part of western Turkey where Sinan (Aydin Dogu Demirkol) and his family live…
…. Over eight features in more than 20 years, this director, a fixture at Cannes and other international festivals, has charted the isolation, anomie and passive-aggressive gloom of modern, mostly secular Turks. Their failure to connect with one another or the better parts of themselves can feel symptomatic of a larger malaise. Young or old, artists, farmers or entrepreneurs, they tend to be frustrated, adrift and confused, at once alienated from their society and unable to break free of it.
