Other forms: lamentations
Lamentation is loud grieving for something lost. Weeping and lamentation, a great lamentation, cries of lamentation.
It is public and vocal by definition, which is what separates it from private grief. The Book of Lamentations is a whole biblical text of it, written over the destruction of Jerusalem.
1nounlamentationLoud grieving for something lost.
“Loud lamentation filled the village as news of the shipwreck spread.”
lamentation is a grieving.
Latin lamentatio comes from lamentari, to wail.
Proto-Indo-European
*leh₂- — to howl
Latin
lāmentātiō — wailing, moaning, weeping
Middle French
lamentation
Middle English
lamentacioun
English, today
lamentation
Built from
Recorded since 1375, from Middle English lamentacioun, from Middle French lamentation and its etymon Latin lāmentātiō (“wailing, moaning, weeping”), from the deponent verb lāmentor, from lāmentum (“wail; wailing”), itself from a Proto-Indo-European leh₂- (“to howl”), presumed ultimately imitative. Replaced Old English cwiþan. by surface analysis, lament + -ation.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA