Contemplative Meaning
/kənˈtɛmplətɪv/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
adjInclined to contemplate; introspective and thoughtful; meditative.
adjPertaining to a religious contemplative, or a contemplative religious orders, especially the Roman Catholic varieties.
Sentence Examples
The lake's stillness mirrored Gabriel's contemplative mood.
His face looks very serious and contemplative.
Synonyms & Antonyms
Synonyms:
Antonyms:
CEFR Practice Quiz
The ____ monk sat still and silent in the garden every morning.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The lake's stillness mirrored Gabriel's ____ mood.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English contemplatyve, contemplatyf, from Old French contemplatif, from Latin contemplātīvus.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"Compared with the greatest poets, he may be said to be the poet of unpoetical natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. But unpoetical natures are precisely those which require poetic cultivation. This cultivation Wordsworth is much more fitted to give, than poets who are intrinsically far more poets than he."
— 1873, John Stuart Mill, chapter 5, in Autobiography:
"Whether the nuns of yore, being of a submissive rather than a stiff-necked generation, habitually bent their contemplative heads to avoid collision with the beams in the low ceilings of the many chambers of their House [...] may be matters of interest to its haunting ghosts (if any), but constitute no item in Miss Twinkleton's half-yearly accounts."
— 1870 April–September, Charles Dickens, “'”, in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1870, →OCLC:
"Like the white page that surrounds the darkness of each letter you are reading here, eternity surrounds each heartbeat, and as the contemplative watches his breath, he can move out of time through the doorway which opens in the interval between each heartbeat."
— 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light:Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, page 10:
"The contemplative must not expect exotic feelings, visions or heavenly voices; these did not come from God but from his own fevered imagination and would merely distract him from his true objective [...]."
— 2009, Karen Armstrong, The Case for God, Vintage, published 2010, page 112:
Explore More C1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The ____ monk sat still and silent in the garden every morning.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
The lake's stillness mirrored Gabriel's ____ mood.