Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Discontent; regret; complaint.

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

  • noun The act of fretting or feeling discontent or of murmuring.
  • verb Present participle of repine.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • God willing I will check this vain repining, "– she said, while the tears coursed one another down her cheeks in spite of her efforts; but she wiped them away, and resolutely shaking back her head, continued," I will exert myself and look out for a small house commodiously situated in some populous but healthy district, where we will take a few young ladies to board and educate – if we can get them – and as many day-pupils as will come, or as we can manage to instruct.

    Agnes Grey 1931

  • When the mess becomes too much to tolerate for the repining Olivier and he bursts with frustration, veteran thespian Sybil Thorndike Judi Dench pops up like a daisy through mud to defend the woman with whom many have come to sympathize.

    Felice Arenas: Williams Has Same 'Hunger as Monroe,' Says My Week With Marilyn Director Felice Arenas 2011

  • When the mess becomes too much to tolerate for the repining Olivier and he bursts with frustration, veteran thespian Sybil Thorndike Judi Dench pops up like a daisy through mud to defend the woman with whom many have come to sympathize.

    Felice Arenas: Williams Has Same 'Hunger as Monroe,' Says My Week With Marilyn Director Felice Arenas 2011

  • Dame Mary Page was buried in 1728 under a massive marble chest, with a long and excruciating inscription recording her last illness: "In 67 months she was tapp'd 60 times, had taken away 240 gallons of water, without ever repining at her case or ever fearing the operation."

    Burial ground of Bunyan, Defoe and Blake earns protected status 2011

  • Pianist Max Delmarc spends his life repining for a woman he never had the nerve to approach.

    A Window Onto Comic Tedium Sam Sacks 2011

  • When the mess becomes too much to tolerate for the repining Olivier and he bursts with frustration, veteran thespian Sybil Thorndike Judi Dench pops up like a daisy through mud to defend the woman with whom many have come to sympathize.

    Felice Arenas: Williams Has Same 'Hunger as Monroe,' Says My Week With Marilyn Director Felice Arenas 2011

  • I know it would be a finer lifestyle with other things under control, but until the inflammatory thingie is entirely sorted, it's no use repining.

    gillpolack: It must be nearly the end of a teaching gillpolack 2009

  • I know it would be a finer lifestyle with other things under control, but until the inflammatory thingie is entirely sorted, it's no use repining.

    Even in a little thing gillpolack 2009

  • I began now to regret more bitterly than ever the having fooled away my family property, the care and improvement of which I saw might have afforded an agreeable employment for my leisure, which only went to brood on past misfortunes, and increase useless repining.

    Chronicles of the Canongate 2008

  • But this adored object herself suffered some severe repining at her fate, when she saw, from her window, her lover gallop into the park without equipage, without domestics, and mounted on a hired horse.

    Camilla 2008

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