threnody
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of threnody
1615–25; < Greek thrēnōidía, equivalent to thrên ( os ) dirge + -ōid ( ḗ ) song ( see ode) + -ia -y 3
Explanation
An emotional poem or song that memorializes someone who has died can be called a threnody. Your threnody to your beloved dog may be an important part of your grieving process. Imagine a grief-filled lament sung or recited at the funeral of someone you loved very much. That's a threnody, a work of memorial art that captures the loss we feel after a tragic death. We can trace threnody back to a Greek root, threnodia, which means "lamentation." Examples of threnodies vary from A. E. Housman's 1896 poem "To an Athlete Dying Young" to Eric Clapton's 1991 song "Tears in Heaven," written after the death of his young son.
Vocabulary lists containing threnody
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.
See Examples For:
Of course, “the unspeakable horror of the literary life” — to borrow Mr. Earbrass’s phrase from Edward Gorey’s “The Unstrung Harp” — is a familiar threnody in the writing biz.
From Washington Post ● May 25, 2022
Mr. Greenwood’s own score for the movie “There Will Be Blood,” for example, features his “Popcorn Superhet Receiver,” a work directly inspired by the Hiroshima threnody.
From New York Times ● Mar. 29, 2020
It was an acute and devastating threnody, which King read in a methodical cadence.
From The New Yorker ● Apr. 3, 2017
After a savage climax, a slow, occasionally discursive string threnody takes over, during which the brass intrusions gradually lose some ferocity and the music moves towards a tentative nobility.
From The Guardian ● Jun. 11, 2012
Then we heard the Muses sing a threnody in nine immortal voices.
From "The Odyssey" by Homer
On “From Ukraine, For Ukraine,” a darkly brilliant new omnibus album by the cutting-edge Kyiv label Standard Deviation, grief and rage melt into impudently beautiful contemporary threnodies.
From New York Times ● Dec. 7, 2022
By fusing gay rage and sorrow with familiar musical gestures—Straussian orchestral explosions, Samuel Barber-like threnodies for strings—it ennobled a portion of the population for which many orchestra subscribers might have felt disgust.
From The New Yorker ● May 30, 2019
Gazing at demagoguery, environmental ruin and intimate betrayal, Thom Yorke croons threnodies, not lullabies.
From New York Times ● Dec. 7, 2016
The nation that was once the world's most famous optimist began to shuffle around in a bathrobe, feeling mediocre and depleted, listening to threnodies by the Club of Rome.
From Time Magazine Archive
He is fantastic and conceited in most of the threnodies; but, as is natural, that on his old friend, Sir Henry Rainsford, is least artificial and fullest of true feeling.
From Minor Poems of Michael Drayton by Brett, Cyril
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.
