Prufrockian

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Resembling the hesitant, self-doubting, socially anxious figure of T. S. Eliot's poem about J. Alfred Prufrock
2. Marked by the paralyzing indecision and painful self-consciousness of the character from Eliot's famous 1915 poem
3. Describing a person who is timid, overthinking and unable to act, in the manner of Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock

Etymology: "Prufrockian" takes its name from J. Alfred Prufrock, the self-conscious speaker of T. S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which the source ties to the same name. Eliot's character is a timid, hesitant man who agonizes over every social gesture and never quite acts, and the adjective describes that temperament: indecision dressed up in elaborate self-scrutiny. The word is formed simply from the surname "Prufrock" and the suffix "-ian," which turns a proper name into an adjective meaning "relating to" or "characteristic of" that person. The same pattern gives us "Shakespearean" and "Dickensian." Here the suffix attaches to a fictional name rather than a historical figure, so the adjective draws its meaning entirely from the poem's portrait of its narrator.

Synonyms: hesitant, indecisive

Antonyms: decisive