elegiac
adjective
Did you know?
Elegiac was borrowed into English in the 16th century from Late Latin elagiacus, which in turn derives from Greek elegeiakos. Elegeiakos traces back to the Greek word for "elegiac couplet," which was elegeion. It is no surprise, then, that the earliest meaning of elegiac referred to such poetic couplets. These days, of course, the word is also used to describe anything sorrowful or nostalgic. As you may have guessed, another descendant of elegeion in English is elegy, which in its oldest sense refers to a poem in elegiac couplets, and now can equally refer to a somewhat broader range of laments for something or someone that is now lost.
Examples of elegiac in a Sentence
Nate Zipp, Christian Science Monitor, 1 May 2025
Anatomy of a Transpacific Cyber Campaign by Michael Berry
Sam Needleman
‘On the Brink of Erasure’
Tacita Dean’s mesmerizing, elegiac drawing and filmmaking spring from both broad exploration and acute focus.
—Susan Tallman, The New York Review of Books, 25 Apr. 2025
The cumulative weight of all those moments that make up an ordinary life is the subject of this elegiac macro-miniaturist portrait of an itinerant worker in the early 1900s Pacific Northwest, played by Joel Edgerton in what might be the best work of his career.
—David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 27 Jan. 2025
But another Best Picture nominee offered a more playful variation on The Wild Bunch’s elegiac spirit, the George Roy Hill–directed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford as outlaws roaming an Old West that’s starting to leave them behind.
—Keith Phipps, Vulture, 3 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for elegiac
Cite this Entry
“Elegiac.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/elegiac. Accessed 5 May. 2025.
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