plaintiveness

Indeed, as she so often said to me, with a kind of plaintiveness which should have softened my declamatory ardour but did not, she did not like speaking of such matters at all; she regarded it as a kind of desecration.

The Message 1912

The recorded blare of Lynyrd Skynyrd and commotion of thousands of milling football fans — gathered for college football's national championship game — hardly obscured the plaintiveness in Linda Pope's voice Sunday afternoon.

Arizonans 'thrown into spotlight in bad way' in wake of shooting 2011

Their eyes had in them the querulous plaintiveness of the monkey, their faces were even less symmetrical than the monkey's, and, hairless of body, they were far more ungarmented than any monkey, for clothes they had none.

A SON OF THE SUN 2010

Puss teams up with Humpty Dumpty a creepily epicene ovoid voiced with eerie plaintiveness by Zach Galifianakis to repay an old debt by stealing some magic beans from Jack and Jill.

'Like Crazy': From Cupid's Blunders, Wonders Joe Morgenstern 2011

The unaccustomed pessimism and plaintiveness of her letters worried Pearl “A little seed of anxiety sowed itself,” Grace wrote, “and thrust down a torturing root”.

PEARL BUCK IN CHINA Hilary Spurling 2010

The unaccustomed pessimism and plaintiveness of her letters worried Pearl “A little seed of anxiety sowed itself,” Grace wrote, “and thrust down a torturing root”.

PEARL BUCK IN CHINA Hilary Spurling 2010

It was the plaintiveness, the earnest, weak whine of the appeal, exactly the sort of sheep-to-the-slaughter attitude the Übermenschen Germans attributed to the lowly Jews, that alleged pathetic helplessness that only triggered more Blutrausch, the frenzy of killing that once begun could not be stopped.

The Lampshade Mark Jacobson 2010

Rougher hits: It would be years before I was savvy enough to realize that you'd have to hear "Don't Be Cruel" and "Heartbreak Hotel," rougher hits that preceded "Love Me Tender," and only then would you have an inkling of just how dangerous a singer might sound who cross-wired the plaintiveness of white gospel and country to the jump boogie of black blues.

Forever Elvis 2008

In the drafts, we encounter this plaintiveness again but in a different register.

Paper Trail 2006

In the drafts, we encounter this plaintiveness again but in a different register.

Paper Trail 2006