jeremiad
Americannoun
noun
Etymology
Origin of jeremiad
1770–80; Jeremi(ah) + -ad 1 in reference to Jeremiah's Lamentations
Explanation
If a kid who's away at summer camp mails his parents a jeremiad, it means that he sends them a long, sad list of complaints. Use the noun jeremiad to talk about any list of woes, especially a lengthy, mournful one. Many letters to the editors of newspapers and comments on websites are jeremiads, and someone addressing a city council or school board might make a verbal jeremiad — speaking for a long time about their many grievances. The word jeremiad was coined in 1700s France, as jérémiade, and it was a reference to the Old Testament's "Lamentations of Jeremiah."
Vocabulary lists containing jeremiad
There's A Word for That
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You Name It: Eponyms
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National Spelling Bee '14: Prelims Round 2
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
His underlying idea isn’t a jeremiad against AI as a whole, but that the market has detached from reality.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 28, 2025
I don’t intend this column to be either a jeremiad or a lambasting of marijuana.
From Salon ● Dec. 31, 2024
Her 2010 novel “So Much for That” was a jeremiad about American health care that cruised on the strength of its characters.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 20, 2022
But the HBO show is a savage jeremiad, inspiring sympathy for its characters only insofar as they’re prisoners of familial pathology.
From Seattle Times ● Jul. 29, 2022
Not grief, but a hereditary rapprochement with death in the abstract, moved her to a dismal, watery snuffling, accompanied by her usual jeremiad.
From Rolling Stones by O. Henry
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
