Mope
verb
Etymology: of uncertain origin.
Indicative past, past participle: moped (məUpt); present participle: moping
Present third person singular: she/he mopes
Derived words from mope: mope (noun), moped, mopeful, moper, mopery, mopiness, moping (noun, adj.), mopingly, mopish, mopishly, mopishness, mopy.
Intransitive uses:
1. To be in a state of unconsciousness, stupidity or inattentiveness; to act as if unsouled. (Obsolete acceptation)
2. To be in a state of uninterestedness, dullness, and listlessness; to be as if inert, stupefied or unsouled because of uneventfulness, uninterest or discontentedness; act uncheerfully or sadly; to remain in motionlessness for lack of something inciting.
Postdefinition: to understand better this acceptation, compare the Spanish metaphorical acceptation desanimarse or the Italian one disanimarsi.
Approximate synonym: to sulk.
Antonyms: to perk, exult.
Equivalent periphrases in other languages: estar desanimado, in Spanish; être découragé (ou démotivé), in French; stare scoraggiato, in Italian.
The door stood partly open; but the locksmith's hammer was unheard; the cat sat moping on the ashy forge; all was deserted, dark, and silent.
Charles Dickens (Barnaby Rudge)
Why don't you come to us of an evening, instead of moping at home with that Captain Dobbin? William Makepeace Thackeray (Vanity Fair)
He knew that he idled and moped. Charles Dickens (Little Dorrit)
They would have talked to me too, but I held back, and moped in my corner; scared by their love-making and hilarity. Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)
She had been with us about three months. There was mystery about her, like a former servant of my mother's, she scarcely ever wanted to go out. At times we heard her singing, at others sobbing, and it used to be remarked that she was moping. Walter (My Secret Life)
“David,” said Mr. Murdstone, “to the young this is a world for action; not for moping and droning in.” Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)
I know he doesn't go to bed, because my room is the next one, and when I went upstairs last Tuesday, hours after him, I found that he had not even taken his shoes off; and he had no candle, so he must have sat moping in the dark all the time. Charles Dickens (The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby)
We insensibly approached the old boat, and entered. Mrs. Gummidge, no longer moping in her especial corner, was busy preparing breakfast. Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)
The solitary child lived on, surrounded by this arabesque work of his musing fancy, and no one understood him. Mrs Blimber thought him 'odd,' and sometimes the servants said among themselves that little Dombey 'moped;' but that was all. Charles Dickens (Dombey and Son)
"My lady used to love the sport well enough," said Raoul; "but, I wot not why, she is moped and mazed ever since her father's death, and lives in her fair castle like a nun in a cloister, without disport or revelry of any kind. Walter Scott (The Betrothed)
The man explained that shortly after the young woman's bereavement a stranger had come to the port. He had seen her moping on the quay, had been attracted by her youth and loneliness, and in an extraordinarily brief wooing had completely fascinated her- had carried her off, and, as was reported, had married her. Thomas Hardy (A Changed Man and other Tales)
You will see some high play at my card-tables to-night. Hush! my dear. It was that I wanted, and without which I moped so at Castlewood! William Makepeace Thackeray (The Virginians)
3. To be in a state of apparent sadness or discontentedness, even if the malcontent is not inactive.
Postdefinition: in this acceptation, the connotation of inactiveness is no more, maybe for ignorance of the analogy that we derive from the first acceptation (the literal one).
She is moping for you still, I dare say. Idiot that I was to intermeddle in her joy.
Alexander Fraser (A Fashionable Marriage)
Mama and Papa empathize with Billy's feelings, whether he is moping for hounds that they have no money to buy, celebrating winning a championship, or grieving over his dogs' deaths. Frank Northen Magill (Masterplots II.: Juvenile and young adult fiction series)
One time, when he bought each of the girls Golden Story books, he got The Ugly Duckling for Brenda and she moped about it. Said to his face that she didn't want a baby book and tried to give it back. Marsha Hunt (Joy)
[The gazelle] is moping for the loss of a sister, whose corpse you presently perceive outstretched upon the gravel walk. Vivian Herbert (Tunisia and the Modern Barbary Pirates)
4. To move listlessly or dully.
Duke wasn’t on the bus the next day. Cheri moped her way around the school until she ran into Judy. Donald James Parker (Love Waits)
Ella let her sister pull the sheets down and then slid out of bed. “I gotta take a shower,” she said as she moped her way down the hall, her thin cotton boxers clinging to her butt. Hailey Abbott (Summer Boys)
Transitive uses:
1. To be moping during (a certain time)
Postdefinition: it is construed with away, as if time were an animal thing that goes away from us.
[Joe] would have moped his life away in some dark corner where no one could see him. Silas Kitto Hocking (Her Benny)
We were all in the backyard, moping away the afternoon, when I felt the need to use the bathroom. Stan Evans (Box of Mustaches)
[…] although he is one of the very best husbands in the world, kind, gentle and affectionate when here, I do not see him except at meal times, three hours in a fortnight. And here I sit, “moping” away my young hours, thinking all sorts of melancholy things. Robert Morris (The Neglected Wife)
Uncle Gerald came into my room. “Come, daughter,” he said, in a tone whose cheerfulness was assumed for my sake, “we’re not going to let you sit here, moping away all the summer, after this fashion. Just hurry on your bonnet, and take a ride with me.” Virginia Frances Townsend (While it was Morning)
She wished she had been on a tour –and seeing lions, she said, instead of moping away the whole two weeks at her aunt’s. Mrs. Henry Wood (Helen Whitney’s Wedding)
2. To cause (a person or other animal) to mope; to make dull or listless.
Postdefinition: it is more usual in the reflexive mode.
You were moped at your uncle’s, that was why I carried you off to my own house; and now you’re moped here. G. J. Whytemelville (Uncle John)
The viscountess […] urged her not to mope herself at home. Jane West (A Tale of the Times)
A further reason for my allowing children a liberty of expressing their innocent desires, is, that the contrary is impracticable; and you must have the children almost moped for want of diversion and recreation. John Locke (Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 1693)
***I have found some constructions, where the consequence of “moping oneself” is meant by the preposition into or merely by the complement without the preposition into.
[Hilda] had moped herself into a languid and depressed tone.
Emma Jane Worboise (The grey house at Endlestone)
[…] she moped herself sick. Richard Savage (Miss Devereux of the Mariquita, 1895)
[…] she might have moped herself into misanthropy. Olivia Raleigh
His wife, poor young thing, has moped herself into something – it is not consumption, I believe; but she is dying. The New Monthly Magazine (A Tomb in a Foreign Land)
She has moped herself pale and thin enough lately, and has been pining after her precious aunt. William Chambers – Robert Chambers (Chambers’s Journal)
3. To shut up (a person or other animal) in a place so as to mope him.
[Nightshade] protested against being “moped up,” and made Jeremiah go along with her to balls, plays, concerts, and other places of amusement. Parterre of Poetry and Historical Romance
The child shouldn't be moped up here, all winter! Adeline D. Whitney (Faith Gartney's Girlhood, 1863)
