Home › Glossary › Letter L

Lament

Form
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A poetic form expressing deep sorrow, mourning, or regret—often for the dead—characterized by plaintive tone, elegiac structure, and emotional gravity.

Detailed Definition
Lament is a poetic genre expressing grief, mourning, or sorrow, often for the dead, lost love, or societal decline; characterized by plaintive tone, rhetorical questions, and invocations, it spans from ancient dirges like “The Lament for Ur” to modern elegies by Auden or Heaney.
Example
Example in poetry:
Lament: A poem expressing deep grief, often for the dead; example: Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” mourning Lincoln: “My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still.”
Additional Notes
Lament: A poem expressing grief, often for the dead; features mourning, invocation, and emotional outpouring; precursor to the elegy; found in biblical (e.g., Lamentations) and oral traditions worldwide.
Other Meanings of “Lament”
Also Known As
Mourning poem Dirge Grief song Elegy Complaint Funeral poem Jeremiad Plaint Threnody Wailing bemoan bewail lamenting phrase threnody phrase Complainte Greet Planctus caoin caoíne caoineadh tuireamh Cry buckets Sorrow Ochone deplore moan Lamentation
Skip to main content