Mourning is the period and outward signs of grief for the dead. In mourning, a year of mourning, mourning dress.
It is the public and social side of loss where grief is the feeling, and cultures set its length and its clothes — Victorian widows wore black for two years by convention. Those rules gave people something to do, which is what modern mourning often lacks.
1nounmourningThe period and outward signs of grief for the dead.
“The whole country was in mourning after the king died.”
mourning is a period of grief.
Proto-Indo-European
*(s)mer- (remember)
Proto-Germanic
*murnaną
Old English
murnan
Middle English
mornen
English
mourn
English, today
mourning
by surface analysis, mourn + -ing. mourn comes from Middle English mornen, mournen, from Old English murnan, from Proto-Germanic murnaną. Cognate with French morne (“gloomy”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA