Malaise
Etymology
From French “malaise,” a compound of Old French “mal” (bad) and “aise” (ease), so literally “bad ease” or discomfort. It entered English in the 18th century and kept both the bodily sense (the first heaviness before an illness declares itself) and a figurative one for a mood that hangs over a group or an era.
noun · /ma-LAYZ/
A vague, pervasive feeling of unease or discomfort that resists any clear cause.
What it names
The sense that something is subtly wrong — with your body, your mood, or the whole society — without a symptom you can name.
Example
A general malaise had settled over the town after the factory closed, though no single person could say exactly what felt broken.
Related idea
Where anxiety points forward to an imagined threat, malaise is diffuse and present-tense — less a fear of something coming than a dull wrongness already here.