plaintive
expressing sorrow or melancholy; mournful: a plaintive melody.
Origin of plaintive
1Other words for plaintive
Opposites for plaintive
Other words from plaintive
- plain·tive·ly, adverb
- plain·tive·ness, noun
Words that may be confused with plaintive
- plaintiff, plaintive
Words Nearby plaintive
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024
How to use plaintive in a sentence
All three of those things, and more era-specific delights, are right there in Wright’s movie, as if he had read my own plaintive childhood desires and put them onscreen.
Edgar Wright's 1960s Fever Dream Last Night in Soho Is a Half-Brilliant Thriller | Stephanie Zacharek | September 4, 2021 | TimeHamer declared in her plaintive, outspoken way: “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired!”
Remembering Civil Rights Heroine Fannie Lou Hamer: 'I'm Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired' | Lottie L. Joiner | September 2, 2014 | THE DAILY BEASTHence the plaintive email from inside the bunker at Walmart in February.
Walmart’s Anti-Union Wage Plans Earn a Cold Shoulder From Big Cities | Daniel Gross | July 11, 2013 | THE DAILY BEASTWhat a strange, plaintive philosophy for someone whose profession involved sitting alone most of the day: love the world.
It was a message rejected as too plaintive and apologetic by the black America of 1950.
He also has a precocious attraction to his favorite nurse, Ingrid, who sings to him every night in a “plaintive voice.”
From higher up, at the level of the hidden bed, came the regular plaintive respiration of Sarah Gailey.
Hilda Lessways | Arnold BennettThere is nothing like a plaintive retort when your case is utterly indefensible.
The music grew strange and fantastic—turbulent, insistent, plaintive and soft with entreaty.
The Awakening and Selected Short Stories | Kate ChopinFor Sara Lee's statement that she could manage would draw forth a plaintive burst from the older woman.
The Amazing Interlude | Mary Roberts RinehartIn one such startled interval of waking her caged cricket had given out its plaintive cry.
The Dragon Painter | Mary McNeil Fenollosa
British Dictionary definitions for plaintive
/ (ˈpleɪntɪv) /
expressing melancholy; mournful
Origin of plaintive
1Derived forms of plaintive
- plaintively, adverb
- plaintiveness, noun
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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