Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- intransitive verb To be discontented or low in spirits; complain or fret.
- intransitive verb To yearn after something.
from The Century Dictionary.
- To be fretfully discontented; be unhappy and indulge in complaint; murmur: often with at or against.
- To fail; give way.
- noun A repining.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- intransitive verb obsolete To fail; to wane.
- intransitive verb To continue pining; to feel inward discontent which preys on the spirits; to indulge in envy or complaint; to murmur.
- noun obsolete Vexation; mortification.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- verb express discontent
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
Support
Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word repine.
Examples
-
For the young men, that were most able and fit for labor and service, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense.
-
This shows that just as locative repine and inessive repinθi are forms of *repin, so too are locative haθe and haθrθi forms of *hanθ cf. hanθin.
Oddly formed locatives with inessive postclitic in Etruscan 2009
-
But actually it's nothing but whining of spoilt fans, provided with the greatest stuff in the universe and being so satisfied that they look for anything to repine againts.
The Great Bear 2009
-
Luckily for me, the entire phrase is also found in another case, the simple locative: haθe-c repine-c in LL 9.xii also hante-c repine-c in LL 3.xxiv.
Oddly formed locatives with inessive postclitic in Etruscan 2009
-
My comforters cannot bring me to repine much on this subject.
-
'Indeed, Sir, – and pray believe me, I do not mean to repine I have not the beauty of Indiana; I know and have always heard her loveliness is beyond all comparison.
Camilla 2008
-
I repine not at the lot which Providence has assigned me?
-
And though his income, as you know, was so small, he never ran in debt, and by an exact but open oeconomy, escaped all imputation of meanness: while by forbearing either to conceal, or repine at his limited fortune, he blunted even the raillery of the dissipated, by frankly and good humouredly meeting it half way.
Camilla 2008
-
My comforters cannot bring me to repine much on this subject.
-
In fact, Rene was a prince of very moderate parts, endowed with a love of the fine arts, which he craved to extremity, and a degree of good humor, which never permitted him to repine at fortune, but rendered its possessor happy, when a prince of keener feelings would have died of despair.
Anne of Geierstein 2008
chained_bear commented on the word repine
"'I should be ungrateful to repine: but I could wish that Captain Aubrey had given us as clear a view of the Great Barrier Reef.'"
--Patrick O'Brian, The Nutmeg of Consolation, 257
March 9, 2008
bilby commented on the word repine
"Even Hancock, though he might regret the source of this sudden wealth, could not repine at its consequences."
- 'Jane Austen: A Life', David Nokes.
March 25, 2008
johnmperry commented on the word repine
Means wishing things had turned out differently. Jane Austen uses it a lot.
“Oh! that my dear mother had more command over herself; she can have no idea of the pain she gives me by her continual reflections on him. But I will not repine. It cannot last long. He will be forgot, and we shall all be as we were before.�?
Pride & Prejudice, Volume II chapter 1
June 17, 2008
milosrdenstvi commented on the word repine
I saw the use of this as a synonym for yearn, pine. Dictionaries here say it's all right but it still seems a misusage to me -- I've never seen it contextually thus in any real author. Can someone contradict?
July 18, 2011