mal du siècle /ˌmæl.duˈsjɛk.l(ə)/ noun1 •Apathy and world-weariness, involving pessimism towards the current state of the world, often along with nostalgia for the past, originally in the context of French Romanticism; Weltschmerz.Both are struggling hard with the mal du siècle, the Romantic disease of the imagination, that makes it so difficult to convert private dreams into sustained social realities. — 1987
