depression
Pluraldepressions
- 1A mental health condition, or a long period of it, in which a person feels deeply sad and hopeless and loses interest in life.
Untreated depression can affect a person's sleep, appetite, and ability to work.
She sought therapy when depression began to color every part of her day.
UsagePeople suffer from depression or are treated for depression; one bout can take an article: a deep depression.
Note
A clinical qualifier can sharpen it, as when the novelist William Styron, in The New York Times in 1988, ties Primo Levi's death to "the major depression with which he was afflicted." In this sense it names a condition, not a passing feeling such as despondency or misery.
- 2A long and severe slump in a nation's economy, with falling output and trade and high unemployment.
Economists warned that the financial crisis could deepen into a full depression.
During the depression, unemployment soared and entire industries collapsed.
UsageThe Great Depression names the 1930s slump; a milder, shorter slump is a recession.
Note
Economists reserve the word for a slump that is deeper and longer-lasting than a recession, with output, trade and employment falling across a whole economy. In ordinary use it is judged by severity rather than by a formula: a contraction becomes a depression when it is too grave and too long to call a downturn.
- 3A region of lowered air pressure that usually brings moist weather and can sometimes strengthen into a tropical storm or hurricane.
A deepening depression in the Atlantic threatened to strengthen into a tropical storm.
The depression brought low cloud and steady rain across the region.
Similarlow
Oppositeanticyclone, high
Note
The forecaster carries the image of a hollow in the ground into the air: what sits low here is pressure, not land. A depression is said to deepen as its pressure falls further. The damp weather it brings is routine. Only sometimes does a tropical depression strengthen into the storms and hurricanes that make headlines, so the word alone does not signal danger.
- 4A hollow or sunken area in a surface, especially a part of the ground lower than the land around it.
A shallow depression in the desert floor marked where a lake had once been.
Water pooled in every depression along the muddy trail.
Similarhollow, dip, basin, hole, trough
Note
The word works at every scale. In Richard Jefferies's The Amateur Poacher (1879), the ground "sank into a depression" behind a ridge. Gwen White's Antique Toys and Their Background (1971) uses the same word for the hollow in a toy tray where a marble must come to rest. Any surface can have one, and the geographer's landscapes are simply the largest.
Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 4 facts
- Richard Jefferies wrote The Amateur Poacher, first published in 1879. openlibrary.org
- The Amateur Poacher contains the exact words 'sank into a depression', describing ground screened by a ridge. gutenberg.org
- Gwen White wrote Antique Toys and Their Background, first published in 1971. openlibrary.org
- White's book uses 'depression' for the hollow in a handheld maze tray into which a marble must be rolled. en.wiktionary.org
- 5A reduction in a particular biological variable or in the function of an organ, as contrasted with elevation.
Opioids can cause respiratory depression at high doses.
The medication produced a marked depression of immune function.
Similarsuppression, reduction, decrease, impairment, inhibition
Oppositeelevation, stimulation, increase
Note
Physiologists pair this word with elevation as its opposite: one names a lowered measurement, the other a raised one. It usually takes an of-phrase or a body-system adjective, as in depression of immune function or respiratory depression. No mood is implied. Respiratory depression is breathing too slow or too shallow, not sadness, so keep it apart from the mood disorder when reading clinical notes.
Less common meaning
- 6The act of lowering something or pressing it downward.
The depression of the piano key produces the note.
Continuous depression of the brake pedal slowed the car gradually.
Note
It is the plain action noun of depress and matches it in form, depress plus -ion, though the word itself came into English through French from Latin. It usually takes an of-phrase naming what goes down, as in depression of the lever or of a pedal, though compounds such as key depression also occur. Without such a cue, a reader will hear one of the word's commoner meanings instead.
Practice
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Origin
This word came through Middle English and Old French from Latin "dēpressiō", and is equivalent to "depress" plus the suffix "-ion".
Checked 7 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The word came through Middle English and Old French from Latin dēpressiō. en.wiktionary.org
- The word is equivalent to depress plus the suffix -ion. en.wiktionary.org