Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state or quality of being plangent; a noisy dashing or beating.

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

  • noun rare The quality or state of being plangent; a beating sound.

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

  • noun The state of being plangent

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

  • noun having the character of a loud deep sound; the quality of being resonant

Etymologies

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Examples

  • "I tormented myself," he declares in a tone which, for sheer plangency, has not sounded since Whittaker Chambers sang among the pumpkins.

    r_urell: William F. Buckley: Father of Modern "Conservatism" r_urell 2010

  • But, curiously, Maazel did not allow the glorious waltzes to stretch out in their languor or reach their full plangency -- instead going for relatively clipped endings and sudden dynamic changes.

    Donna Perlmutter: Maazel to the Podium -- Still Collecting Orchestras 2010

  • Disclaimer: I Twitter -- "hanft" is my hugely clever and obfuscatory user name -- and those few loyalists who follow me hopefully are rewarded with more plangency than "Subway late again. Ugh."

    Adam Hanft: Maureen Dowd, Please Stop Now. Twitter is Not Just For the Banal Retentive 2009

  • Underneath the movie, which is set on the eve of World War I, there's an elegiac plangency that stays with you long after the shocks have worn off.

    The Return Of A Bloody Great Classic 2008

  • Speaking without artifice and with a mellow charm, White also has a plangency that will make you weep, so don't listen (at least, not to the sad parts) while driving.

    The New Oral Tradition 2008

  • The hallmark of those novelists who have tried to write about the attacks is a sort of austere plangency — or a quivering bathos — that has been in evidence almost from the moment the planes hit.

    Racing Against Reality O'Hagan, Andrew 2007

  • Montbrun hastened, with a courtier's smoothness, to recommend the red wine which, though Spanish, had a certain plangency, he thought, which Major Sharpe might find pleasing.

    Sharpe's Honour Cornwell, Bernard 1985

  • The metal gave the blown notes a semi-sad plangency that was unique to this instrument.

    beneath an opal moon Lustbader, Eric 1980

  • To the bizarre plangency of muted trumpets you copy out your cherished, your solitary "Z": Zazoulian, the little Armenian painter.

    Try Anything Twice 1938

  • Her voice had a pleasant plangency, a quality of more yet to come and as if the wells of her vitality were far from drained.

    Star-Dust Fannie Hurst 1928

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