Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Weeping or inclined to weep; tearful.
  • adjective Causing or tending to cause tears.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Generating or shedding tears; given to shedding tears; suffused with tears; tearful.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective tearful, sorrowful, sad, pertaining to tears, weeping, causing tears or crying

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective showing sorrow

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin lacrimōsus, from lacrima, tear; see lachrymal.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin lacrimōsus, from lacrima ("tear") (f.), + -osus ("-ful"), from Old Latin dacruma, from Proto-Indo-European *dakru-, cognate with English tear.

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Examples

  • He was not only kind-hearted, but very tender-hearted, so that his lips would quiver on occasions and his eyes fill with tears, -- what doctors improperly call a lachrymose nature; but in regard to a question of principle or public necessity he was as firm as Plymouth Rock.

    Cambridge Sketches Frank Preston Stearns 1881

  • I think Boehner will be strong and lachrymose, which is an interesting combination.

    FOXNews.com Chris Stirewalt 2010

  • Adderley watched them too with a kind of lachrymose interest.

    God's Good Man Marie Corelli 1889

  • Adderley watched them too with a kind of lachrymose interest.

    God's Good Man Marie Corelli 1889

  • Adderley watched them too with a kind of lachrymose interest.

    God's Good Man Marie Corelli 1889

  • Most of the novel is arrogant and a caricature, yet that's preferable to Mr. Pierre's lachrymose attempts to gin up sympathy for his maladroit hero: Gabriel thinks of his mother, What I wouldn't give to hug her now, that smiling, woolly person.

    Art's Power to Humiliate and to Heal Sam Sacks 2011

  • These are somber moments on a solemn quest, and the book, with its repeated explorations of solitude, grief, remembrance and loss is elegiac—lachrymose, even.

    On Holy Ground Alice Albinia 2011

  • All told, this was a lachrymose week, though perversely if the greatest music provokes a lump in your throat you know it's all going swimmingly.

    Antonio Meneses and Maria João Pires; La traviata – review 2012

  • The manner in which the saga has been dealt with in France, by the media and also by political figures, really shines a light on what we already knew was there: unfettered sexism, said de Haas, one of several feminists to find her voice just as France's reaction to the Affaire DSK looked like settling into lachrymose tributes to an alleged attacker and scorn for an alleged victim.

    How Dominique Strauss-Kahn's arrest awoke a dormant anger in the heart of France's women 2011

  • He is also as tough as nails, whatever the lachrymose breakdown at the Braehead Arena on Sunday might have suggested, and his commitment in pursuing his aim of getting to the top in an era that entertains the two greatest players of all time, Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, is total.

    Andy Murray's tears shine a light on a misunderstood fighter | Kevin Mitchell 2011

Comments

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  • I love lachrymose songs of lost love.

    August 16, 2007

  • Now I envisage the lachrymose mourning of my wife who loved me,

    there is the clearing of drawers, folding of vacated clothes.

    - Peter reading, C, 1984

    September 28, 2008

  • cf. larmoyant

    December 31, 2008

  • suggestive of or tending to cause tears; mournful

    March 18, 2009

  • See also lacrymose.

    March 15, 2015