Malaise
noun /malˈeɪz/ — A vague feeling of discomfort and illness — without clear cause.
Definition
A general feeling of discomfort, illness, or unease whose exact cause is difficult to identify; a vague sense that something is wrong — physically or more broadly in a social or cultural sense.
Beyond the definition
Malaise is the word for the feeling before you know what's wrong. The body's pre-symptom signal; the cultural sense of something amiss in an institution or society. Its vagueness is part of its meaning — malaise is specifically the undifferentiated discomfort, before diagnosis or identification.
Origin & history
From Old French malaise (discomfort), from mal (bad, badly) + aise (ease, comfort). The opposite of ease — the dis-ease before it has a name.
Example sentences
Illustrative sentences for learning, not verified community posts or sourced quotations.
She woke with a malaise that was not quite illness — a grey, heavy feeling without a source.
There was a cultural malaise in the country that the election had not addressed.
The malaise that precedes diagnosis is sometimes harder than the diagnosis itself — at least then you know what you are dealing with.
Synonyms
unease, discomfort, lassitude, indisposition
Antonyms
wellbeing, vitality, vigour
Related words
Word in the Wild
See how this word appears in life, language and stories.
Illustrative sentences and imagined stories for learning — not verified sightings, interviews, or sourced quotations.
Fictional scene
Feeling like an outsider at work
An adult stands alone in a bustling office, looking confused and disconnected from the busy colleagues around them.
The person's isolation in a space where they should belong suggests a vague, persistent discomfort that is hard to pin down. It illustrates the feeling of malaise, where the exact cause of unease in a social environment remains confusing and difficult to identify.
Image credit: Wordspun · AI-generated conceptual illustration