Vocabulary : PLAINTIVE Pronunciation: PLAYN-tiv Hear it! Part of Speech: Adjective Meaning: Melancholy, mournful, expressing grief or sadness. Notes: The trick with todays word is not to confuse it with plaintiff complainant in a court case. They were once one and the same, but they drifted apart once English borrowed them. The English word is built on the noun plaint mourning, lamentation, also borrowed from French. The adverb and noun are straightforward enough: plaintively and plaintiveness. In Play: Plaintive is a word of soft beauty: The plaintive song of a nightingale outside the window made the cafe the perfect setting for Matt Tremonys proposal. Todays word first and foremost signifies a sad beauty, like the blues: Bertha D. Blues, mother of the Blues Brothers, sang a plaintive song of her childhood, of a history piled high with regrets. Word History: Todays Good Word is from Old French plaintif complaining based on the noun plainte a complaint; a lament. French inherited this word from Latin planctus lamentation, wailing, beating of the breast, the past participle stem of plangere to lament, to strike.
Posted on: Mon, 10 Feb 2014 19:12:08 +0000
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