dirge
a funeral song or tune, or one expressing mourning in commemoration of the dead.
any composition resembling such a song or tune in character, as a poem of lament for the dead or solemn, mournful music: Tennyson's dirge for the Duke of Wellington.
a mournful sound resembling a dirge: The autumn wind sang the dirge of summer.
Ecclesiastical. the office of the dead, or the funeral service as sung.
Origin of dirge
1Words Nearby dirge
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use dirge in a sentence
Now again they are choosingA fall filled with funeral dirges.
Typically, a jazz funeral procession begins at a church or home, and musicians join the walking mourners along the route to the cemetery playing slow, sorrowful dirges.
As he sees it, the long days of illness have turned his life into a tedious, meaningless dirge with nothing to look forward to other than its end.
Near the end of life, my hospice patient had a ghostly visitor who altered his view of the world | Scott Janssen | January 2, 2021 | Washington PostThe 19th century, though, was a 100-year dirge from one horrid epidemic to another.
When TB Was a Death Sentence: An Excerpt From ‘The Remedy’ | Thomas Goetz | April 16, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTThe design team sent out a dirge of mostly camel-colored leggings, leather shorts, tunics, and jackets.
The funeral dirge for Rockefeller Republicans, blaring since several key Tea Party wins this week, has been playing for decades.
The media sounded the funeral dirge and the Democrats formed circular firing squads.
It was the dirge of the British Empire in America, “The World Turned Upside Down.”
And old Sanders again tapped in the rhythm of a dirge on his parchment-bound cranium.
The Fifth String | John Philip SousaNature seemed to lie stark and stiff and dead, and that accursed craake her dirge.
It Is Never Too Late to Mend | Charles ReadeShe sat where he had left her, and was crooning again the weird tuneless dirge at which Marto had been appalled.
The Treasure Trail | Marah Ellis RyanIt certainly looked as if a true prophet was writing that dirge!
The Story of the Cambrian | C. P. GasquoineEven the sea birds that circled around them seemed screaming a dirge.
Fifty-Two Stories For Girls | Various
British Dictionary definitions for dirge
/ (dɜːdʒ) /
a chant of lamentation for the dead
the funeral service in its solemn or sung forms
any mourning song or melody
Origin of dirge
1Derived forms of dirge
- dirgeful, adjective
Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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