''crestfallen'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260723122144-00-⌔

crestfallen - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

crestfallen (comparative more crestfallen, superlative most crestfallen)

• Sad because of a disappointment.
  • ✤ Tom’s cheeks burned. He gathered himself up and sneaked off, crushed and crestfallen.¹
  • ✤ Gregson looked quite crest-fallen.²
  • ✤ Hall tried to convey everything by grimaces and dumb show, but Mrs. Hall was obdurate. She raised her voice. So Hall and Henfrey, rather crestfallen, tiptoed back to the bar, gesticulating to explain to her.³
  • ✤ ‘He did it awfully well,’ said the crestfallen Rat.⁴
  • ✤ I rushed there; no lamp! Crestfallen, I returned to my guru.⁵
  • ✤ And we can sense that, though permanently crestfallen, there is something in his nature, which makes him accept solitude, that is rather fearless.⁶
  • ✤ Yes, unfortunately, she’d heard him correctly. She was crestfallen. Here she’d come so far to ask him the question, and he didn’t know the answer.⁷
  • ✤ Brother Gáeth was a tall man with almost ugly features and a permanently crestfallen expression that made the elderly abbot immediately feel guilty that he had spoken so roughly.⁸
  • ✤ Valentine’s Day means different things for different people. For Homer, it means forking over a hundred dollars for a dusty box of chocolates at the Kwik-E-Mart after characteristically forgetting the holiday yet again. For Ned, it’s another opportunity to prove his love for his wife. Most germane to the episode, for Lisa, Valentine’s Day means being the only person in her entire class to give Ralph a Valentine after noticing him looking crestfallen and alone at his desk.⁹
  • ✤ Diniz was a dark man who seemed closed in on himself, always crestfallen, walking along the walls and corners, answering questions with monosyllables and whispered sounds.¹⁰
  • ✤ He had short, dark hair, liberally flecked with silver-grey strands, heavily lidded brown eyes and a mouth that turned down at the edges, giving him a permanently crestfallen expression.¹¹
• (obsolete, of a horse) Having the crest, or upper part of the neck, hanging to one side.

Etymology

From crest +‎ fallen, from the appearance of a horse with its crest (head) on its chest after defeat in a battle.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA: /ˈkɹɛstfɔːlən/
• (US) IPA: /ˈkɹɛstfɔlən/
• (cot–caught merger) IPA: /ˈkɹɛstfɑlən/
• Audio (US, cot–caught merger): 🔊
• Audio (Australian): 🔊

Printed 2026-07-23.

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Footnotes

1. 1876, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XII, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Hartford, Conn.: The American Publishing Company, →OCLC, page 112: ↩

2. 1887, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “A Study in Scarlet”, in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, London; New York, N.Y.: Ward, Lock & Co., part I (Being a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D., […]), chapter VI (Tobias Gregson shows What He Can Do), page 38: ↩

3. 1897, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 12, in The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance, New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, →OCLC: ↩

4. 1908 October, Kenneth Grahame, chapter 6, in The Wind in the Willows, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, →OCLC: ↩

5. 1946, Paramahansa Yogananda, chapter 15, in Autobiography of a Yogi: ↩

6. 1995, Roger Lewis, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, page 743: ↩

7. 2010, Pseudonymous Bosch, chapter 3, in This Isn’t What It Looks Like: ↩

8. 2011, Peter Tremayne, The Chalice of Blood: A Mystery of Ancient Ireland, page 9: ↩

9. 2012 August 5, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “I Love Lisa” (season 4, episode 15; originally aired 02/11/1993)”, in A.V. Club ‎${}^{[1]}$, archived from the original on 29 March 2013: ↩

10. 2015, Alda de Jesus Oliveira, The PONTES Approach to Music Education: Learning to Reach Out: ↩

11. 2021, James Bowring, Down in the Country: A Carlow Valley Mystery: ↩