[Vox_Leone]

Not meant to school or lecture anyone, but ‘morose’ stems from the Latin ‘mora’, meaning ‘delay', something slow. Examples from Latin.: _mora solvendi_ (delay in paying), _compensatio morae_ (compensation for the delay).

I believe that the original meaning is lost [or warped at least] when it becomes synonymous with bleak, cheerless, chill, Cimmerian, cloudy, cold, depressing...

But since it means ‘slow’ it also relates to blue, dejected, depressed, despondent, down, droopy, hangdog, inconsolable, low, melancholic[0].

[0]https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/morose

[tsimionescu]

And "telephone" comes from roots meaning "sound at a distance" or "far away sound". That doesn't make it right to say you heard the "telephone of laughter" when you meant to say the "distant sound of laughter" .

[cassianoleal]

In fact, the Portuguese (false) cognate "moroso(a)" and its noun "morosidade" means exactly that: sluggish, slow.