Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Loud and resounding: plangent bells.
- adj. Expressing or suggesting sadness; plaintive: "From a doorway came the plangent sounds of a guitar” ( Malcolm Lowry).
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Beating; dashing, as waves.
- Resounding; clashing; noisy.
Wiktionary
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. rare Beating; dashing, as a wave.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. loud and resounding
Etymologies
- Latin plangens from plangere “to beat” (Wiktionary)
- Latin plangēns, plangent-, present participle of plangere, to strike, lament; see plāk-2 in Indo-European roots. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“Still, no one is likely to go to Shakespeare's plangent farewell drama on the off-chance of chortling at the comic scenes.”
The Guardian: Decade; The Tempest; The Kitchen; Parade – review
“There's a rich tradition of plangent, slightly overheated sacred art that treats the spirit as flesh - think Correggio and Barocci, among others.”
The Washington Post: Gopnik's Daily Pic: Fragonard's sacred heat
“In this and many ways, Moving Pictures is a plangent and honest book, rendered all the more affecting by its modulation and detachment.”
“Effervescent, lyrical, plangent, wistful by turns, this score surrounds the immortal hit "Le Tourbillon de La Vie" (The Whirlwind of Life), which Ms. Moreau and the composer Bassiak (playing her lover in the movie) made into a world-wide hit, although it had been written seven years earlier.”
“I needed some guidance that only the best poetry can provide, so I turned to this month's issue of plangent voices magazine, at $3.75 your best entertainment value.”
“When Steiner jumps he is shown in slow motion, accompanied by the plangent, minimal music of Florian Fricke's band Popol Vuh.”
“Flick through the economic reports published this week and the same plangent theme sounds again and again.”
“Those sorts of fiscal transfers become particularly plangent during times of general austerity, like the one the U.K. is facing now.”
The Wall Street Journal: EU Integration Would Come at a High Price
“Yet the score, with its plangent chords full of added fourths, and snatched motifs which promise elusive melody then dissolve, locks you in its grip.”
The Guardian: Niobe, Regina di Tebe; Faust; The Makropulos Case; Fidelio
“The Dream of Perpetual Motion is plangent, tender and sui generis: a steampunk The Tempest with the grim and rippling beauty of a fairy tale.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘plangent’.
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important
shamanism, consol, sanguine, iffy, affinity, concatenation, honed, innumberable, aiden, inexorable, vet, suss and 176 more...
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my fab list
blowsabella, aperçu, froideur, salubrious, abject, gallipot, mumchance, wainscot, virago, macerate, lascivious, clandestine and 181 more...
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Waves and Waveforms
wave, brainwave, soliton, traveling wave, tidal wave, transverse wave, capillary wave, cats' paws, alpha wave, light wave, microwave, acoustic wave and 314 more...
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phrontistery - p
from phrontistery.info
pustule, purulence, pushful, purser, purpureal, putative, purpure, purpresture, purloin, purline, purlieu, purlicue and 1766 more...
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wallace
Remington, Windsor, prorector, wen, aver, mottle, seltzer, tepee, lapidary, effete, sotto, presbyopia and 351 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Of sounds and voices
tongue, alveolar, plosive, full-voiced, sibilant, hissing, fricative, guttural, wharl, burr, velar, palatalize and 29 more...
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deep sleep
sleep tight, sleep like a top, sopor, coulee, imbuement, yerba santa, inveteracy, filaree, bathos, spindrift, crash, puri and 14 more...
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perfectly plosive p's
positively p's, please!
perdurable, penultimate, proscenium, pysmatic, petaliferous, pogoniasis, pyx, palimpsest, pareidolia, perspicuous, pauciloquy, pococurante and 14 more...
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Descriptions of Sound
jingling, gurgling, horrisonous, horrisonant, crepitant, screeching, ringing, sonorous, clamorous, rattling, roaring, breathy and 71 more...
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The blues
lugubrious, mournful, doleful, plaintive, tremulous, plangent, dyspeptic, morose, poignant, lamenting, lamentation, sad and 8 more...
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Newly discovered
gambol, zabaglione, archness, gormless, chanteuse, plangent, churl, tonsure, métier, chordate, miscegenation, inchoate
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Poetic
the blue hour, dinner-pail, long-drawn, pettifog, spoonmeat, crawler, eructate, voiced, medial, tessellated, eyeballs, amphigory and 48 more...
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gre2
aberrant, aberration, aboveboard, abrasive, abstemious, acme, admonish, affable, affluent, alacrity, allegory, alleviate and 1824 more...
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adj. + adv.
vainglorious, lanuginous, altiloquent, ambisextrous, desiderative, flothery, liquescent, logoed, autotelic, tropology, erotogenic, crocky and 108 more...
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All The Words
I enjoy collecting words, for I have no fear of them ever running out.
tatterdemalion, panopticon, idioglossia, hypnagogue, hypnopomp, defenestration, anacoluthon, scofflaw, affront, edifying, palimpsest, naufrage and 475 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for plangent.
skipvia Don't forget astringent: foolish yo-yo user. Nov 2, 2007
sionnach Then there are the alternative definitions-
fulgent : a man's post-prandial state
plangent : member of the strategic task force
pungent : someone who enjoys wordplay
stringent : yo-yo user
urgent : Piltdown Man, the missing link Nov 2, 2007