Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Mournful, dismal, or gloomy, especially to an exaggerated or ludicrous degree.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • 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.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Mournful; indicating sorrow, often ridiculously or feignedly; doleful; woful; pitiable.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective gloomy, mournful or dismal, especially to an exaggerated degree.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective excessively mournful

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Latin lūgubris, from lūgēre, to mourn.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin lūgubris ("mournful; gloomy")

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Examples

  • 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.

    Chapter 3 2010

  • He heaved a great sigh, and said in lugubrious tones:

    The Black Moth: A Romance of the XVIII Century 1921

  • A certain lugubrious yarn, "My Graves," was my masterpiece.

    The Alpine Path: The Story of My Career Lucy Maud 1917

  • 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.

    The Jessie 1911

  • A Southern correspondent sends the following incident from real life, which illustrates the well-known negro fondness for so-called lugubrious festivals:

    Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 Various

  • Lady Teazle and Mrs. Oakley were certainly no exceptions to this experience of a cold fit of absolute incapacity with which I received every new part appointed me, and my studying of them might have been called lugubrious, whatever my subsequent performance of them may have been.

    Records of a Girlhood Fanny Kemble 1851

  • 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.

    Archive 2009-07-01 Joe Konrath 2009

  • In some of the tributes I've found on the web, the word "lugubrious" kept popping up: "excessively mournful".

    Archive 2009-04-19 Toby O'B 2009

  • Media Mob reader Peter Van Allen writes in to point out the recurring pattern: Besides McCarthy and Irving, Kakutani has applied the "lugubrious" label to Graham Swift, Don DeLillo, Mark Helprin, J.M. Coetzee and many more.

    Lugubrious and Repetitive 2005

  • "Who will point out to Kakutani that she's overused 'lugubrious'?"

    Lugubrious and Repetitive 2005

Comments

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  • Your mind oozes glumness. What word could better describe your emotion?

    December 3, 2006

  • Lugubrious describes, at any given moment, the facial expression of my hound dog.

    February 2, 2007

  • "(He lifts his mutilated ashen face moonwards and bays lugubriously.)"

    Joyce, Ulysses, 15

    February 8, 2007

  • This is the exact word to describe my dog's expression.

    September 28, 2007

  • Why did I say the same thing twice?

    April 30, 2008

  • Because your dog is especially lugubrious? :-)

    April 30, 2008

  • My dog, an English cocker spaniel, would deserve two comments as well.

    April 30, 2008

  • Really? I wouldn't have thought it possible for an English cocker spaniel to look lugubrious. :-)

    April 30, 2008

  • I think Cocker spaniels do look kind of mournful. Not as mournful as, say, Bassett hounds (mine is not a Bassett though).

    Does anyone else think spaniel is a good-mouthfeel word?

    April 30, 2008

  • I didn't say my dog looks lugubrious!

    May 1, 2008

  • ... oh... What were you saying?

    May 1, 2008

  • That your dog deserves two comments? Well, doesn't every dog? :-)

    c_b, spaniel sounds all spangly to me.

    May 1, 2008

  • OK, now he has seven.

    May 1, 2008

  • Well, I'm going to talk about my dog so she'll have seven as well. My dog is a hound dog. She has a lugubrious expression, even when she's happy.

    May 1, 2008

  • That's five. Oh, wait--that's six, if I say "chained_bear's dog."

    May 1, 2008

  • I love lugubrious dog faces. And I would love your dog's. (seven)

    May 1, 2008

  • There. Now you're even. Unless.... *mwwahaha*

    May 1, 2008

  • dbmag9 - I LOVE your comment. I will never think of lugubrious the same way, which is the point, right?

    February 28, 2009

  • The next planet was inhabited by a tippler. This was a very short visit, but it plunged the little prince into deep dejection.

    "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

    July 24, 2009

  • My band teacher thinks that he created this word...

    May 2, 2011

  • He obviously never met my dog. (EIGHT!! Boo-yah!)

    May 2, 2011

  • Chained, did you know that Prolagus has an English cocker spaniel who, though not lugubrious, deserves two or more comments?

    May 2, 2011

  • Oh, I love you all, and your dogs' lugubrious faces.

    May 2, 2011

  • CAROUSEL

    May 26, 2011