dejection

From Old French dejection, from Latin dejectio (“a casting down”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /dɪˈdʒɛkʃən/
• (US) IPA^(key): /dəˈdʒɛkʃən/
• Rhymes: -ɛkʃən

dejection (countable and uncountable, plural dejections)

1. A state of melancholy or depression; low spirits, the blues.
2. The act of humbling or abasing oneself.

   Adoration implies submission and dejection. — Bishop Pearson.

3. A low condition; weakness; inability.

   A dejection of appetite. — Arbuthnot.

4. (medicine, archaic) Defecation or feces.
   • 1855, Austin Flint, Clinical Reports on Continued Fever Based on Analyses of One Hundred and Sixty-Four Cases‎, Linday & Blakiston, First Clinical Report on Continued Fever, Based on an Analysis of Forty-Two Cases, page 39:

     No dejection since his entrance, nor has he passed urine.

   • 1861, James Jackson, Another Letter to a Young Physician‎, Applewood Books, published 2010, →ISBN, Note I. John Lowell, page 103:

     His dejections were frequent, loose, changing in character from hour to hour, made up of undigested food, of mucus and watery fluid, varying in color, mostly green, and never healthy in consistence, color, or odor.

   • 1921, Charles Signmund Raue, Diseases of Children - Homeopathic Treatment‎, 2nd edition edition, B. Jain Publishers, published 2000, →ISBN, Chapter IX Diseases of the Intestines, pages 205-206:

     Chorera infantum may begin as an attack of acute indigestion, or, what is more frequently the case, suddenly, with severe vomiting and copious dejections, high fever and rapid prostration.

• (melancholy, depression, low spirits): despondency, downheartedness, crestfallenness
• (defecation or feces): excrement, bowel movement