elegiac

[el-i-jahy-uhk, -ak, ih-lee-jee-ak]

adjective

1. used in, suitable for, or resembling an elegy.

2. expressing sorrow or lamentation.

   elegiac strains.

3. Classical Prosody.,  noting a distich or couplet the first line of which is a dactylic hexameter and the second a pentameter, or a verse differing from the hexameter by suppression of the arsis or metrically unaccented part of the third and the sixth foot.

noun

1. an elegiac or distich verse.

2. a poem in such distichs or verses.

elegiac

/ ˌɛlɪˈdʒaɪək /

adjective

1. resembling, characteristic of, relating to, or appropriate to an elegy

2. lamenting; mournful; plaintive

3. denoting or written in elegiac couplets or elegiac stanzas

noun

1. (often plural) an elegiac couplet or stanza

Other Word Forms

• elegiacally adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of elegiac¹

First recorded in 1575–85; from Middle French, from Latin elegīacus, from Greek elegeiakós; equivalent to elegy + -ac

Example Sentences

Cushioned between the more experimental songs, however, were the real crowd-pleasers: An elegiac version of Lucky, a beautifully twisted No Surprises and a genuinely sublime version of Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.

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The execution is nevertheless lush, sometimes startlingly beautiful, and painterly and evocative of Johnson’s elegiac theme about a bygone America.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

“Beloved Renegade” is as elegiac a gathering as “Speaking in Tongues” is a chilling one.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Her tone in “Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction” is elegiac, as though smartphones have killed off the craft; yet it’s also a manifesto of sorts, and a declaration of her own aesthetics.

Read more on Los Angeles Times

Its orotund prose certainly differs from the lean muscularity of the Second Inaugural or the elegiac concision of the Gettysburg Address.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

• funereal 
• melancholy 
• mournful 
• sad 
• sorrowful