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plaintive

UK/ˈpleɪntɪv/US/ˈpleɪntɪv/
adjectiveC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,741 of 15,258neutral

Plaintive means sounding sad and full of complaint. A plaintive cry, plaintive music, plaintive voice.

It is about sound almost always, so a plaintive look is a stretch where a plaintive note is not. The complaint in it is mournful rather than angry. It shares its root with plaintiff, the person bringing a complaint to court.

Definitions of plaintive

  1. 1adjectiveplaintiveSounding sad and full of complaint.C1

    “The kitten gave a plaintive meow outside the locked door.”

plaintive is a quality of sound.

Where it comes from

Old French pleintif means lamenting, from plainte, a lament, from Latin plangere, to beat the breast in grief. Plaintiff is the same word.

  1. Old French

    pleintif — aggrieved, lamenting

  2. Middle English

    pleintif

  3. English, today

    plaintive

Built from

  • plainte · Old French — lament, complaint

From Middle English pleintif, plentyff, from Old French pleintif (“aggrieved, lamenting”) (whence modern French plaintif), from plainte (“lament, complaint”); see plaint. a doublet of plaintiff.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Song of Ice and Fire

Practise this word

plaintive in the wild

  • The waltz begins with a plaintive Introduction with clarinets and oboes.

    Flugschriften

  • The plaintive ballad reflects on lost love and features strummed acoustic guitar rhythm with pedal steel guitar.

    Tangerine (Led Zeppelin song)

  • The plaintive cuckoo (Cacomantis merulinus) is a species of bird belonging to the genus Cacomantis in the cuckoo family Cuculidae.

    Plaintive cuckoo

  • Dorst's cisticola (Cisticola guinea), also known as the plaintive cisticola, is a bird in the family Cisticolidae.

    Dorst's cisticola

  • LaPado-Breglia praised the song as "so beautiful, with its plaintive violin and heart-stirring vocals".

    Flor Pálida

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.