Library / English Dictionary

REPINE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Express discontent

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Hypernyms (to "repine" is one way to...):

complain; kick; kvetch; plain; quetch; sound off (express complaints, discontent, displeasure, or unhappiness)

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s

Credits

 Context examples: 

I wonder at the goodness of God; the generosity of my friends; the bounty of my lot. I do not repine.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I have committed follies, gentlemen, said Uriah, looking round with a meek smile, and I ought to bear the consequences without repining.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Elinor honoured her for a plan which originated so nobly as this; though smiling to see the same eager fancy which had been leading her to the extreme of languid indolence and selfish repining, now at work in introducing excess into a scheme of such rational employment and virtuous self-control.

(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)

He said, “they commonly acted like mortals till about thirty years old; after which, by degrees, they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession: for otherwise, there not being above two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they came to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other old men, but many more which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative, but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects against which their envy seems principally directed, are the vices of the younger sort and the deaths of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament and repine that others have gone to a harbour of rest to which they themselves never can hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything but what they learned and observed in their youth and middle-age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than upon their best recollections. The least miserable among them appear to be those who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories; these meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities which abound in others.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Elizabeth had been a good deal disappointed in not finding a letter from Jane on their first arrival at Lambton; and this disappointment had been renewed on each of the mornings that had now been spent there; but on the third her repining was over, and her sister justified, by the receipt of two letters from her at once, on one of which was marked that it had been missent elsewhere.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling life, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined!

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Here, she said, stretching out her hand with her contemptuous laugh, and looking down upon the prostrate girl, is a worthy cause of division between lady-mother and gentleman-son; of grief in a house where she wouldn't have been admitted as a kitchen-girl; of anger, and repining, and reproach.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Mrs. Bennet still continued to wonder and repine at his returning no more, and though a day seldom passed in which Elizabeth did not account for it clearly, there was little chance of her ever considering it with less perplexity.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

But I will not repine.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Wholly inattentive to her sister's feelings, Lydia flew about the house in restless ecstasy, calling for everyone's congratulations, and laughing and talking with more violence than ever; whilst the luckless Kitty continued in the parlour repined at her fate in terms as unreasonable as her accent was peevish.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)