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MOURNING
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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 ("mourning" is a kind of...):
activity (any specific behavior)
expression; manifestation; reflection; reflexion (expression without words)
Sense 2
Meaning:
State of sorrow over the death or departure of a loved one
Synonyms:
bereavement; mourning
Classified under:
Nouns denoting stable states of affairs
Hypernyms ("mourning" is a kind of...):
sadness; sorrow; sorrowfulness (the state of being sad)
Derivation:
mourn (feel sadness)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Sorrowful through loss or deprivation
Example:
bereft of hope
Synonyms:
bereaved; bereft; grief-stricken; grieving; mourning; sorrowing
Classified under:
Similar:
sorrowful (experiencing or marked by or expressing sorrow especially that associated with irreparable loss)
III. (verb)
Sense 1
-ing form of the verb mourn
Context examples:
A state of sadness, grief, and mourning after the loss of a loved one.
(Bereavement, NCI Dictionary)
My greatest wish now, she added, is to get back to Kansas, for Aunt Em will surely think something dreadful has happened to me, and that will make her put on mourning; and unless the crops are better this year than they were last, I am sure Uncle Henry cannot afford it.
(The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum)
When therefore the son had been proclaimed king, and the time of mourning was over, he was forced to keep the promise which he had given his father, and caused the king’s daughter to be asked in marriage, and she was promised to him.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
It is not, however, in the nature of things that a lad of twenty, with young life glowing in his veins and all the wide world before him, should spend his first hours of freedom in mourning for what he had left.
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
On the night before the funeral he was as drunk as ever; and it was shocking, in that house of mourning, to hear him singing away at his ugly old sea-song; but weak as he was, we were all in the fear of death for him, and the doctor was suddenly taken up with a case many miles away and was never near the house after my father's death.
(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)
And with the coming of the night, brooding and mourning by the pool, Buck became alive to a stirring of the new life in the forest other than that which the Yeehats had made, He stood up, listening and scenting.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
There was the garnet set which Aunt March wore when she came out, the pearls her father gave her on her wedding day, her lover's diamonds, the jet mourning rings and pins, the queer lockets, with portraits of dead friends and weeping willows made of hair inside, the baby bracelets her one little daughter had worn, Uncle March's big watch, with the red seal so many childish hands had played with, and in a box all by itself lay Aunt March's wedding ring, too small now for her fat finger, but put carefully away like the most precious jewel of them all.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
And so well was she able to answer her own expectations, that when she joined them at dinner only two hours after she had first suffered the extinction of all her dearest hopes, no one would have supposed from the appearance of the sisters, that Elinor was mourning in secret over obstacles which must divide her for ever from the object of her love, and that Marianne was internally dwelling on the perfections of a man, of whose whole heart she felt thoroughly possessed, and whom she expected to see in every carriage which drove near their house.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
It was driven by a servant in mourning.
(Persuasion, by Jane Austen)
I am sorry to observe you are in mourning.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
