Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially to an exaggerated or ludicrous degree.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Characterized by or expressing mourning or sorrow; mournful; doleful; funereal; dejected: as, lugubrious wailing; a lugubrious look or voice.
- Exciting mournful feelings; pitiful; dismal; depressing: as, a lugubrious spectacle or event.
- Synonyms Sorrowful, melancholy, doleful.
Wiktionary
- adj. gloomy, mournful or dismal, especially to an exaggerated degree.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Mournful; indicating sorrow, often ridiculously or feignedly; doleful; woful; pitiable.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. excessively mournful
Etymologies
- From Latin lūgubris, from lūgēre, to mourn.
Examples
“He heaved a great sigh, and said in lugubrious tones:”
“A certain lugubrious yarn, "My Graves," was my masterpiece.”
“He saw the two whale-boats land on the beach, and the sick, on stretchers or pick-a-back, groaning and wailing, go by in lugubrious procession.”
“In some of the tributes I've found on the web, the word "lugubrious" kept popping up: "excessively mournful".”
“You click on the word "lugubrious" and it gives you a dictionary definition, or the word "Taj Mahal" and it shows you a jpg picture.”
“They're lovely together – Benedict an old British bulldog with a lugubrious face that has begun to melt in the heat of old age; Johnny more feline, a panther, nocturnal and silky, prowling to jazz.”
“The Grams are a group of unimpeachable integrity led by the lugubrious Keva Liam Boyle, whose abusive childhood guarantees the authenticity of his music.”
“Your voice is pale, and placid in the lugubrious wind as you whisper — tire?”
“When I was a sophomore and had a date with an angel, I put these lush and lugubrious Jackie Gleason 33 rpm's on the turn table -- Music to Make Her Change Her Mind, and Music to Make Her Misty -- heard in the film L.A. Confidential, sandwiched in with a cut or two from Johnny Mathis's Heavenly.”
The Huffington Post: James A. Fragale: Save the Music, Music, Music!
“So deal now in transgressions, not generalities; deal fast before any public inquiry wends its lugubrious way through coming years.”
The Guardian: Don't punish innocent papers: it's the rogues that need to be regulated
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘lugubrious’.
-
GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4084 more...
-
• Wordies talk about themselves
Sometimes users are also persons.
llogos, peter stickles, old age, 39, insomnia, frown of approval, chuck norris, ovular, gay, fencing, rabbits, seven empty cups ... and 137 more...
-
cicatrix
scar tissue
minatory, naira, Cluniac, embracive, prolix, hierophant, timorous, adduce, veracious, dysphoric, sang-froid, vitiate and 410 more...
-
Longishwords
Long words pregnant with discomfiting expectation
surreptitious, defatigable, lugubrious, strabismus, iconoclastic, mollycoddle
-
Words describing singing voices
mellifluous, gravelly, rusty bathtub, velvet fog, howling, laconic, fluttering, quavery, hypnotic, stilted, lilting, sonorous and 20 more...
-
Insulting or rather nasty words
fetid, malodorous, salacious, lurid, lugubrious, viscid, curmudgeon, tawdry, agglutinate, glaucous, grotty
-
My Words
velleity, phosphene, pandiculate, flibbertigibbet, nascent, pulchritude, parlance, quixotic, sepulcher, factitious, perspicacity, imbroglio and 118 more...
-
Words to make you sound smart
duality, hence, inference, deduce, juxtapose, mundane, gregarious, plight, esoteric, austere, encompass, subsidize and 17 more...
-
Underused Gems
Good words that I should use more often.
erroneous, sapient, taciturn, lugubrious, supercillious, virulent, derelict, ostentatious, abjure, paltry, florid, elucidate and 8 more...
-
Advanced Words: Part II
facetious, felicitous, grandiloquent, germane, repatriate, exigency, exculpate, etheral, fatuous, heterogeneous, hiatus, idiosyncrasy and 118 more...
-
Depression
slough of despond, pity party of one, corrosive, lugubrious, failure pile in a..., woofits, woebegone
-
Words to Use
habitué, hackney, harpy, harridan, hedonism, hootenanny, callipygous, lucubrate, pococurante, querulous, recondite, susurrus and 110 more...
-
What David Foster Wallace circled in his dictio...
ablative, ablaut, abulia, acephalous, ACTH, adit, adumbrate, agrapha, ailanthus, aleatory, alfresco, algolagnia and 474 more...
-
traipsin' 'long through dis 'ear book...
Words which are either entirely new to me or;
Words which I comprehend generally but would prefer a more precise definition.
venality, seigneurial, mendicant, perforce, manse, glebe, trenchant, saw, obstreperous, profligate, dissipation, galliard and 175 more...
-
Pale Fire
convivial, pertussal, jaunt, immolate, demilune, eschatology, ovoid, lugubrious, stillicide, ancillula, disinter, jejune and 8 more...
-
Pale Fire
rubicund, buttonhole, stillicide, preterist, curio, iridule, lemniscate, cherubic, portico, vestry, rodstein, sectile and 107 more...
"What are you doing there?" he said to the tippler, whom he found settled down in silence before a collection of empty bottles and also a collection of full bottles.
I am drinking," replied the tippler, with a lugubrious air.
"Why are you drinking?" demanded the little prince.
"So that I may forget," replied the tippler.
"Forget what?" inquired the little prince, who already was sorry for him.
"Forget that I am ashamed," the tippler confessed, hanging his head.
"Ashamed of what?" insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him.
"Ashamed of drinking!" The tippler brought his speech to an end, and shut himself up in an impregnable silence.
And the little prince went away, puzzled.
"The grown-ups are certainly very, very odd," he said to himself, as he continued on his journey.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery Jul 24, 2009
c_b, spaniel sounds all spangly to me. Apr 30, 2008
Does anyone else think spaniel is a good-mouthfeel word? Apr 30, 2008
Joyce, Ulysses, 15 Feb 8, 2007