Word of the Day Archive
Wednesday December 18, 2002
lugubrious \lu-GOO-bree-us; -GYOO-\
, adjective:
Mournful, dismal, or gloomy, esp. in an affected, exaggerated, or unrelieved manner.
Oh yes, he says, and his lugubrious expression suggests that the loss afflicts him still.
-- Mary Riddell, New Statesman, September 19, 1997
His patriarchy often seemed lugubrious; he would often have tears in his eyes when elucidating all my failings.
-- Richard Elman, Namedropping: Mostly Literary Memoirs
Previous visits hadn't yielded this art-after-death aura, which had everything to do with two installations on display, work so lugubrious it cast a pall over . . . well, just over me, but dark clouds hovered above the city, and the gloomy weather might as well have emanated from the art.
-- Bernard Cooper, "The Uses of the Ghoulish", Los Angeles Magazine, February 2001
Lugubrious comes from Latin lugubris, from lugere, to mourn.
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for lugubrious
