elegiac

The useful part

// The elegiac tone of the singer’s first album always leaves me in tears. See the entry > Examples: “[Jacqueline] Harpman was writing in a different era, but the elegiac loneliness of her fiction anticipates our own solitary and screen-bound present. Elegeiakos traces back to the Greek word for “elegiac couplet,” which was elegeion.

How it works

• How do I find you?” вЂ" Katy Waldman, The New Yorker, 3 Aug.
• As a wise man once sang, “sad songs say so much.” Just how much they say has never been definitively quantified, but it is notable that English has the perfect adjective, elegiac, to describe things...
• It is no surprise, then, that the earliest meaning of elegiac referred to such poetic couplets.
• These days, of course, the word is also used to describe anything sorrowful or nostalgic.
• As you may have guessed, another descendant of elegeion in English is <a...

Details worth keeping

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 21, 2026 is: elegiac • \el-uh-JYE-ak\ • adjective Elegiac means “of, relating to, or comprising an elegy," an elegy being a sorrowful poem or song, and especially one that expresses sorrow for someone who is dead. Elegiac often describes a poem, song, piece of writing, etc.