Word of the Day Archive
Tuesday March 25, 2008
repine \rih-PINE\ , intransitive verb:
1. To feel or express discontent.
2. To long for something.
Even Hancock, though he might regret the source of this sudden wealth, could not repine at its consequences.
-- David Nokes, Jane Austen: A Life
Deserted at birth by his natural father, sentenced at the age of 11 to Colored Waif's Home in New Orleans, Armstrong did not repine; instead, he returned love for hatred and sought salvation through work.
-- Terry Teachout, "Top Brass", New York Times, August 3, 1997
One may repine over the ineffectiveness of the policies applied to Iraq without quite giving up hope that in some way not visible now Saddam has been undermined.
-- Martin Woollacott, "Iraq's devastation is due to Saddam, not sanctions", The Guardian, February 23, 2001
Thus 250 years ago the philosopher David Hume bemoaned the lack of economic cooperation among countries, blaming the "narrow malignity and envy of nations, which can never bear to see their neighbors thriving, but continually repine at any new efforts towards industry made by any other nation."
-- Benjamin Schwarz, "Why America Thinks It Has to Run the World", The Atlantic, June 1996
Repine is re- (from the Latin) + pine, from Old English pinian, "to torment," ultimately from Latin poena, "penalty, punishment."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for repine
