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Word of the Day Archive
Wednesday February 16, 2000
lugubrious \lu-GOO-bree-us; -GYOO-\, adjective:
1. Mournful; indicating sorrow, often in a way that seems feigned, exaggerated, or ridiculous.
2. Gloomy; dismal.
Oh yes, he says, and his lugubrious expression suggests that the loss afflicts him still.
-- Mary Riddell, New Statesman, September 19, 1997
His patriarchy often seemed lugubrious; he would often have tears in his eyes when elucidating all my failings.
-- Richard Elman, Namedropping: Mostly Literary Memoirs
He was looking out at the green whorls of English fields and English woods, at the enchanting chalky blue of the English sky, and wondering if this tilled and agreeable little country might not be just the place for a man to revive himself, to shake off those morbid dawn vigils, those nights when it seemed some demonic lapdog crouched on his chest, panting into his face; those lugubrious moods that had troubled him ever since Munich like a cough one could never quite be rid of . . .
-- Andrew Miller, Casanova in Love
Previous visits hadn't yielded this art-after-death aura, which had everything to do with two installations on display, work so lugubrious it cast a pall over . . . well, just over me, but dark clouds hovered above the city, and the gloomy weather might as well have emanated from the art.
-- Bernard Cooper, "The Uses of the Ghoulish", Los Angeles Magazine, February 2001
Lugubrious comes from Latin lugubris, from lugere, to mourn.
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for lugubrious
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