Question

brown study noun "Lack of company will soon lead a man into a brown study." Whether or not it's true, that 1532 admonition is the first known example that shows the "reverie" sense of "study" combined with "brown" (in the old and now rare sense of "gloomy"). Today, not all brown studies are "gloomy"-some are merely abstracted-but not, we hope, to the extent that provoked the editors of an encyclopedia of the 1950s to call it "a state nearly related to hypnosis and characterized by the ... arrest of bodily movement." : a state of serious absorption or abstraction

Accepted Answer

September 3, 2013 BROWN-STUD-ee "I fell into a brown study as I walked on, and a voice at my side made me start." - From Charles Dickens's 1850 novel David Copperfield "He was staring fixedly ahead, lost in a brown study, the pupils of his eyes slightly blurred." - From Georgette Heyer 's 1958 novel Venetia

Word	brown study
Date	September 3, 2013
Type	noun
Syllables	BROWN-STUD-ee
Etymology	"Lack of company will soon lead a man into a brown study." Whether or not it's true, that 1532 admonition is the first known example that shows the "reverie" sense of "study" combined with "brown" (in the old and now rare sense of "gloomy"). Today, not all brown studies are "gloomy"-some are merely abstracted-but not, we hope, to the extent that provoked the editors of an encyclopedia of the 1950s to call it "a state nearly related to hypnosis and characterized by the ... arrest of bodily movement."
Examples	"I fell into a brown study as I walked on, and a voice at my side made me start." - From Charles Dickens's 1850 novel David Copperfield "He was staring fixedly ahead, lost in a brown study, the pupils of his eyes slightly blurred." - From Georgette Heyer 's 1958 novel Venetia
Definition	: a state of serious absorption or abstraction

Brown Study Sense State September Noun Brown Stud Ee Lack