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LAMENTATION
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The passionate and demonstrative activity of expressing grief
Synonyms:
lamentation; mourning
Classified under:
Nouns denoting acts or actions
Hypernyms ("lamentation" is a kind of...):
activity (any specific behavior)
expression; manifestation; reflection; reflexion (expression without words)
Derivation:
lament (express grief verbally)
Sense 2
Meaning:
A cry of sorrow and grief
Example:
their pitiful laments could be heard throughout the ward
Synonyms:
lament; lamentation; plaint; wail
Classified under:
Nouns denoting communicative processes and contents
Hypernyms ("lamentation" is a kind of...):
complaint ((formerly) a loud cry (or repeated cries) of pain or rage or sorrow)
Derivation:
lament (express grief verbally)
Context examples:
“Hold your tongue!” Poole said to her, with a ferocity of accent that testified to his own jangled nerves; and indeed, when the girl had so suddenly raised the note of her lamentation, they had all started and turned towards the inner door with faces of dreadful expectation.
(The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
The woman went down, and found all three in the midst of their lamentations, and inquired what was the cause; then Elsie told her also that her future child was to be killed by the pick-axe, when it grew big and had to draw beer, and the pick-axe fell down.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
After joining in general lamentations over the dreadful sequel of this event, which Elizabeth considered as all but certain, and Miss Bennet could not assert to be wholly impossible, the former continued the subject, by saying, But tell me all and everything about it which I have not already heard.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
The little she said was all in lamentation of this inevitable delay; though Elinor tried to raise her spirits, and make her believe, as she THEN really believed herself, that it would be a very short one.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
To which pathetic appeal Daisy would answer with a coo, or Demi with a crow, and Meg would put by her lamentations for a maternal revel, which soothed her solitude for the time being.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Mrs. Bennet, to whose apartment they all repaired, after a few minutes' conversation together, received them exactly as might be expected; with tears and lamentations of regret, invectives against the villainous conduct of Wickham, and complaints of her own sufferings and ill-usage; blaming everybody but the person to whose ill-judging indulgence the errors of her daughter must principally be owing.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
She returned just in time to join the others as they quitted the house, on an excursion through its more immediate premises; and the rest of the morning was easily whiled away, in lounging round the kitchen garden, examining the bloom upon its walls, and listening to the gardener's lamentations upon blights, in dawdling through the green-house, where the loss of her favourite plants, unwarily exposed, and nipped by the lingering frost, raised the laughter of Charlotte,—and in visiting her poultry-yard, where, in the disappointed hopes of her dairy-maid, by hens forsaking their nests, or being stolen by a fox, or in the rapid decrease of a promising young brood, she found fresh sources of merriment.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
