Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A poem or song of mourning or lamentation.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A song of lamentation; a dirge; especially, a poem composed for the occasion of the funeral of some personage.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A song of lamentation; a threnode.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
song orpoem oflamentation ormourning for adead person; adirge ; anelegy .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a song or hymn of mourning composed or performed as a memorial to a dead person
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Now I know there are a lot of words that will be used between storied, but threnody is a sufficiently unusual one as to catch my attention.
Random Thoughts 2003
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Now for those of us who do not know what that word means right off hand (I had to look it up as I was reading a passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson long ago), a threnody is a song or hymn inspired by the grief of losing someone you love.
TheGauntlet.com 2010
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Now for those of us who do not know what that word means right off hand (I had to look it up as I was reading a passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson long ago), a threnody is a song or hymn inspired by the grief of losing someone you love.
HM Doug Van Pelt 2010
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Now for those of us who do not know what that word means right off hand (I had to look it up as I was reading a passage from Ralph Waldo Emerson long ago), a threnody is a song or hymn inspired by the grief of losing someone you love.
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As written, the diphthongization is a kind of threnody in its own right.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson long ago), a threnody is a song or hymn inspired by the grief of losing someone you love.
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"For those of us who do not know what [the] word [ 'threnody']
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House of Exile is a bold, inventive and often haunting threnody for European letters in a terrible century.
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The riot of imagery and emotional inflation in the short feminist allegory “The Call,” in the long poem “The Children of the Moon,” or in the blazing threnody “A Litany at Atlanta” suggested trances, gnostic visions, dark nights of the soul, and, as one perceptive biographer observed, other intensely religious moments that are surprising at first to see in an agnostic and publicly restrained Du Bois.
DARKWATER W.E.B. DU BOIS 2004
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In fact, its tensions could have as much to do with the exquisite intensity of love -- Barber didn't intend it as a threnody -- but Alsop and the orchestra did nothing to go against the prevailing view; it got a gentle, modulated performance from the orchestra's rich strings.
john commented on the word threnody
“We paying respect to the dead right now,” Juelz Santana told the Hammerstein Ballroom crowd Friday night, urging a moment of silence for the friends he had lost in recent months. “We gotta get this right.”
Moments before, the screens above him onstage were displaying their photos — G-Baby, D-Train, Classik, Johnny Jerajian, Huddy 6 — while D.R.S.’s threnody “Gangsta Lean” played over the speakers.
The New York Times, Survivors Celebrate a Family Reunion, by Jon Caramanica, November 28, 2010
November 30, 2010
qms commented on the word threnody
Our grief seeks surcease and a remedy,
A passage from pain to serenity,
And such is the meaning
Of inchoate keening
Or intricate weave of a threnody.
May 24, 2017