Definition of "saturnine" [sat•ur•nine]

• Having the temperament of one born under the supposed astrological influence of Saturn. (adjective)
• Melancholy or sullen. (adjective)
• Having or marked by a tendency to be bitter or sardonic: a saturnine expression on his face. (adjective)
• Produced by absorption of lead. (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "‘By the way, I call the saturnine one … O’Hara … a “dark Celt.”"
• "But there is something in the whole crew, jovial or saturnine, which is found nowhere else, and which, whether in full splendour as in Shakespere, or in occasional glimmers as in"
• "The five or six cantos, at the opening, have all the milk of human nature that entered into the composition of that miscalled saturnine mind."