Photo by Jen Theodore on Unsplash.
We’re probably all feeling some ennui at the moment. It’s a French word for being a bit bored and listless. Because it’s French, in my head it involves lots of languid fanning of one’s own face while sighing and lolling about on a chaise longue. And turns out that’s not far wrong.
Ennui comes from an Old French word, enui, meaning ‘annoyance’. That comes from the Latin ‘in odio’ which means ‘hatred’. At some point ‘enui’ gained an extra ‘n’, and became popular in the 18th century to describe the boredom felt by French youth, who were disappointed that the French Revolution hadn’t been as revolutionary as they’d hoped. This left them full of existential angst, AKA ennui. The meaning morphed again a century or so later, becoming a word expressing a dissatisfaction with the modern age and industrialisation. Lots of arty-farty types suffered from ennui at this time, poor lambs, and because of this it was seen as a mark of how clever you were – because the bourgeoisie were far too stupid to worry about important things like the futility of human existence.
The German version of ennui is ‘Weltschmerz’, which literally translates as ‘world pain’. The difference between the German and French versions is the whole listlessness thing – the Germans are just sad, without all the lying around. I guess they’re just too efficient for that #nationalstereotypes