Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The quality of being plaintive; mournfulness.

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

  • noun The state or condition of being plaintive.

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

  • noun expressing sorrowfulness

Etymologies

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Examples

  • 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

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