Ennui: Definition, Examples, & Origin​

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
Ennui is the negative feeling that comes with dissatisfaction over a lack of excitement and meaning in life. Is it the same as boredom? Read on to find out.
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I feel incredibly fortunate that I have rarely been uncertain of what gives my life meaning. Certain aspects of who I am run like undercurrents throughout my life; I have always wanted to care for others, to learn about the world, and to be close to my friends and family. Being curious, caring, and full of love means I always have something to do that fills me with meaning, whether it is learning about a new place, counseling a new client, or calling a family member to catch up and see how they are doing.
However, I have had moments of feeling disconnected from these purposes for living, and it is not a pleasant experience. Moreover, I have met with many clients, and supported many friends, who seem stuck in their lives, lacking inspiration and a sense of momentum and purpose. They are not simply bored, waiting for something interesting to do; they are experiencing the absence of meaning in their lives. They are having a moment of ennui—pronounced “onn-wee”—an unpleasant but relatively common psychological phenomenon. What do we do with these moments? How do we move through this sensation? How did we get there in the first place? Let’s turn to psychological science for the answers.
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What Is Ennui? (A Definition)​

Ennui is a French word that entered the English language sometime in the last two hundred years. To the French, the experience of ennui had several stages (Irvine, 1999). First, one felt a combination of anxiety and boredom, and one sat around thinking about how to escape the feeling. Next, one entered a stage of trying desperately to do just that—get away from this sensation and into a different experience by whatever means possible. Finally, one reached a stage of spiritual numbness in which one accepted (or perhaps gave in to) the situation and remained discontented but was no longer as anxious about it.

When we use the word in English, we are usually referring to something like the final stage of this French conceptualization. Ennui for English speakers means a sense of purposelessness that emerges in response to having nothing to do and little that seems exciting in one’s life (Irvine, 1999). Note that this is not the same as feeling depressed, because although it has some overlaps, it does not necessarily involve sadness or some of the other symptoms of depression. So some people who are depressed may have an experience of ennui during their depression, while others may not.​

Opposite of Ennui​

Martin Seligman, a renowned psychologist and perhaps the originator of what we know as positive psychology, described three levels of happiness in human existence: living a pleasant life, living an engaged life, and living a meaningful life (Seligman, 2002). If ennui means experiencing life as meaningless, then the opposite of ennui is living fully in the meaningfulness of life. Meaningful living means being in touch with a sense of purpose and fulfillment in one’s daily actions and a connection to a greater vision for what one seeks to become or accomplish.
 
Living with meaning, or experiencing one’s meaning in the moment, is by no means a given or a constant in our lives. Rather, we can easily slip into a situation that feels meaningless, which can lead us to question our selves and our lives (Barbalet, 1999). People have chosen any number of ways to reengage with a sense of meaning, some more practical than others. Did you ever pick a fight with your sibling while growing up just because you were bored? Have you ever blown through an entire season of a reality TV show all at once, hoping that it will snap you out of a mental slump? If so, you’ve been in that place of desperation, trying to regain meaning in your life.

Why Is Ennui Important?

Ennui is a psychologically unpleasant experience. Being disconnected from our sense of purpose and meaning leaves us wandering aimlessly through our lives without much joy. For some populations, such as the elderly, it can become especially strong and persistent (Morgan, 2013). People who have formerly felt a strong sense of purpose, such as through their work or their parenting, may slip into ennui when those responsibilities or roles are no longer present in their lives.

The same may happen to people at other ages when they are frustrated in the pursuit of their personal goals or when life circumstances prevent them from accessing the opportunities they are seeking. A lack of meaning in our lives is destabilizing and upsetting; this I know from experience. There was a brief period of time when I was between graduate programs, and it was not clear that I would be able to finish my graduate degree. Cut off from the goal that had given me such a sense of purpose for so many years, I had some long hours of ennui. I doubted whether there was a good path forward for me and whether other professional opportunities could give me the same sense of meaning I was experiencing as a psychologist. I considered many ways to get out of this rut, and ultimately, I am grateful to say, I chose a good one: While waiting to find out about my future, I did my best to enjoy time with friends and time spent outdoors. When I was offered the chance to continue my studies, the sense of ennui disappeared.​

To understand how powerfully ennui can affect us, we can look at the lengths people will go to just to avoid feeling boredom, which is similar to ennui but not quite the same. Remember how I suggested that, out of sheer boredom, you might have picked a fight with your sibling when you were younger? This is a good example of how people choose unpleasant sensations over no sensations at all. For a deeper explanation of this phenomenon, you could watch the following video:

Video: Why Humans Choose Pain Over Boredom!

Causes of Ennui

One possible cause of ennui is that we become overly accustomed to our environments to the extent that they fail to interest or engage us anymore (Norris-Baker & Scheidt, 1989). Many of my friends who grew up in very small, rural towns have attributed a sense of ennui to feeling trapped in their hometowns. They have felt certain that nothing new or interesting can happen in this place they know too well. Many people reach a moment of ennui in their professional lives too, especially if they have worked in the same capacity for many years.
 
Another possible cause of ennui is if one has become overly afraid of experiencing new things (Norris-Baker & Scheidt, 1989). People may become too inhibited to try new things, even though this would help them avoid that sense of ennui. Perhaps their environments feel too scary to explore, or they just have a strong preference for rituals and the familiar. They may prioritize a sense of safety or a proximity to familiarity over the kind of experiences that help them avoid ennui.
 
A larger cause of ennui may be living in a culture or society that offers few meaningful narratives. For example, consumerist culture in America emphasizes the purchasing and having of things, a pattern that may render our sense of self “empty” unless we are getting stimulation from outside ourselves (Cushman, 1990). Since we cannot be the things that we have, having more things is unlikely to give us a sense of purpose.
 
Lastly, as I noted above, life events may intervene to strip our lives of meaning. Being laid off, losing a family member to death or a partner to divorce, or experiencing a traumatic event that undercuts all of one’s assumptions about life—all of these events could disconnect people from their sense of purpose and meaning, leaving them susceptible to experiencing ennui.

Examples of Ennui​

In addition to the examples I have provided so far, we can think of certain stages in life as often involving ennui. A college graduate freshly home from school without a first job secured, an adult experiencing their midlife crisis, an older person waking up the day after their retirement party—all these moments of questioning one’s role in life could be occasions for ennui.

Origin of Ennui

A lack of sense of meaning and purpose was a concern of religious scholars long before psychologists came into being and started studying it (Dalle Pezze & Salzani, 2009). In early Christian thought, people who struggled to find meaning were sometimes thought to be separated from their god or their faith, or even to be possessed by a demon. At the bare minimum, experiencing this kind of spiritual apathy meant that one’s soul was in trouble. This was something that only well-off people could experience. Most of the population was working hard in the fields, doing everything they could to survive; all of their actions seemed purposeful, at least to outsiders.
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Later, the idea of ennui became a more romantic notion, something like melancholy. People who were deep thinkers and were not likely to be bored, it was thought, must have been experiencing a great degree of alienation from the universe to slip into full-on ennui.

Ennui in Art

Artists and philosophers have long spoken about ennui and tried to handle it through artistic production (Martin et al., 2006). What better place than in poetry to grasp for a sense of meaning in life? In the 1800s, many of the most famous European thinkers, such as Baudelaire, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Flaubert, grappled with a search for meaning, and the agony of not finding it, in their writing. In the twentieth century, some scholars would embrace nihilism—the absence of meaning and morals—outright, putting the experience of ennui center stage in their writing.

Ennui and Boredom

Boredom is an experience of the world as dull or uninteresting (Barbalet, 1999). While this is similar to feeling ennui, it is not quite the same. Boredom features irritability and the urge to fix one’s mood; ennui is characterized by the absence of the will to change one’s mood. We react to boredom by trying things until we feel better; we react to ennui by surrendering to a sense of purposelessness and emptiness.

Philosophy of Ennui

Recent philosophers have placed the blame for ennui on aspects of modern society (Irvine, 1999). In our post-industrial, urban, highly structured lives, we may lack a sense of connection to our physical environments or a sense of being meaningfully engaged with the world around us. Simply put, our worlds have become so orderly and supportive of our needs that we struggle to find a sense of purpose.

Cure for Ennui

As noted above, people have tried all sorts of remedies for ennui. Sometimes this can go as far as using drugs to try to make ourselves feel better, or at least feel something, as when students who find their schoolwork meaningless take stimulant medications to help them stay engaged (Lucke et al., 2013).

If a main cause of alienation is being separated from meaningful activities, then the solution to ennui may be to find and engage in meaningful activities (Kalekin-Fishman & Langman, 2015). This is easier said than done when one is experiencing ennui, but it can be accomplished through several means, such as asking oneself what has felt meaningful in the past or observing others who are meaningfully engaged with the world and committing oneself to the same work or causes that they do.​

Quotes on Ennui

  • “There is nothing so insupportable to man as to be in entire repose, without passion, occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own nothingness, isolation, insignificance, dependent nature, powerlessness, emptiness. Immediately there issue from his soul ennui, sadness, chagrin, vexation, despair.” — Blaise Pascal
  • “Ennui, the parent of expensive and ruinous vices.” — Ninon de L'Enclos
  • “Ennui has made more gamblers than avarice, more drunkards than thirst, and perhaps as many suicides as despair.” — Gautama Buddha

Articles Related to Ennui

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Ennui

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Ennui​

By now, you probably recognize whether you have had an experience of ennui. If this has happened to you, know that it is probably the result of forces beyond your control. However, you are not powerless to reengage with the world in ways that restore meaning to your life. There are few more human experiences than losing, and then regaining, a sense of meaning.

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