lamentation

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The act of lamenting.

   About John Marin, there move sad, disgruntled beings, full of talk and lamentations. [...] They bewail the fact that in America, soil is poor and unconducive to growth, and men remain unmoved by growing green. But Marin persists, and what ebullience and good humour, in the rocky ungentle loam?

2. 2
   noun

   the passionate and demonstrative activity of expressing grief

3. 3
   noun

   a cry of sorrow and grief

4. 4
   noun

   A sorrowful cry; a lament.

5. 5
   noun

   Specifically, mourning.

6. 6
   noun

   lamentatio, (part of) a liturgical Bible text (from the book of Job) and its musical settings, usually in the plural; hence, any dirge

7. 7
   noun

   A group of swans.

Etymology

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.