Why this word is great
TRISTFULNESS — [Noun] A state of pensive, atmospheric sadness. From the obsolete adjective tristful ("sad, sorrowful") + the noun-forming suffix -ness, with tristful deriving from Middle English trist ("sad"), from Old French triste, from Latin tristis ("sad, sorrowful"). Unlike "sorrow," which implies an acute grief tied to a specific wound, or "melancholy," which suggests a deep-seated, romanticized gloom, tristfulness is a quieter, more ambient condition. It is the quality of late-afternoon light in an empty room, the scent of rain on pavement after everyone has gone inside, and the particular silence that follows the last note of a familiar song—a gentle, almost physical acknowledgment that some sadness is not a crisis to be solved, but a climate in which the soul sometimes resides.