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Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. A poem composed in elegiac couplets.
  2. n. A poem or song composed especially as a lament for a deceased person.
  3. n. Something resembling such a poem or song.
  4. n. Music A composition that is melancholy or pensive in tone.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. In classical poetry, a poem written in elegiac verse.
  2. n. A mournful or plaintive poem; a poem or song expressive of sorrow and lamentation; a dirge; a funeral song.
  3. n. Any serious poem pervaded by a tone of melancholy, whether grief is actually expressed or not: as, Gray's “Elegy in a Country Churchyard.”
  4. n. In music, a sad or funeral composition, vocal or instrumental, whether actually commemorative or not; a dirge. Synonyms Dirge, Requiem, etc. See dirge.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A mournful or plaintive poem; a funeral song; a poem of lamentation.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. n. A mournful or plaintive poem; a funereal song; a poem of lamentation.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. a mournful poem; a lament for the dead

Etymologies

  1. French élégie, from Latin elegīa, from Greek elegeia, from pl. of elegeion, elegiac distich, from elegos, song, mournful song.

Examples

  • “Analog is a kind of elegy for the pre-digital era of sound and photographic production and Nicholson's prints are the most elegiac components in the mix.”

    The Guardian: Analog – review

  • “The play also charts the rise and fall of the Black Watch Regiment itself, serving as a kind of elegy for the history and tradition it represented until being disbanded in 2006.”

    Nunc Scio » Blog Archive » Theatre Review: Black Watch

  • “Kennedy's book, in effect, serves as a kind of elegy for the state of mind of a particular group of black elites forced by Jim Crow to choose group advancement but now able to follow their personal ambitions.”

    Archive 2008-01-01

  • “Analog is a kind of elegy for the pre-digital era of sound and photographic production and”

    The Guardian World News

  • “And yet it's also a kind of elegy to even bigger movements that once peppered the”

    Telegraph.co.uk - Telegraph online, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph

  • “Vincent Calvino, does include a kind of elegy for Bangkok's traditional buildings: The main house was inside a high-walled compound.”

    Detectives Beyond Borders

  • “From Siegfried Sassoon on, writers have been torn between elegy and satire, and Mr. Dyer balances both in his visits to the cemeteries—first offering examples of the bizarre comments in the visitors' books, then returning to the same spot to eloquently evoke "the vast capacity for forgiveness revealed by these cemeteries.”

    The Wall Street Journal: Their Name Still Liveth

  • “From the sea, we had fresh crab and the local, farm-raised caviar, with olive oil and lemon juice, was a purist's delight, while an "elegy" to langoustine—expressed in tempura, ravioli, carpaccio, parchment paper and bisque—reveled in complexity.”

    The Wall Street Journal: A Foie Gras Tour de France

  • “This grandiose elegy offers choice pleasure to readers who care to eavesdrop on the table- and pillow-talk among an impressive cast of aristocrats local and foreign, philosophes, English expatriates, and quick-witted American arrivistes.”

    The Wall Street Journal: Why They All Came to Versailles

  • “W.B. Yeats, in "Easter, 1916," his elegy about the failed uprising in Dublin against British rule, refers to the Irish rebels, at first, only generically—"that woman," "this man," "this other man.”

    The Wall Street Journal: The Facelessness of Mass Destruction

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  • Dan337
    ELEGY/EULOGY

    A speech praising the deceased person at a funeral is a eulogy. An elegy is a poetic form, usually with a sad or thoughtful subject. . . .
    — http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/elegy.html
    Jan 1, 2011
  • milosrdenstvi "Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd Muse,
    The place of fame and elegy supply:
    And many a holy text around she strews,
    That teach the rustic moralist to die."

    -- Thomas Gray, "Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard Jun 18, 2009

‘elegy’ has been looked up 5083 times, loved by 5 people, added to 73 lists, commented on 2 times, and has a Scrabble score of 9.