Plangent
Rita passed along a word that she encountered in a book that
she is reading. The word is plangent.
It’s an adjective meaning loud, reverberating, and resonant.
Since it was associated with the traditional breast beating that accompanied
extreme grief in the Mideast and the Mediterranean regions, it also came to
mean mournful and plaintive.
Lamentation, wailing, and ululation were part of the
mourning demonstration. Allied words were collugency (mourning together),
conclamate (to loudly mourn the dead), myrology (an extemporaneous funeral
song), quain (to bewail or lament), and threne (a funeral dirge.
Available from McFarland & Co.: Word Parts Dictionary, 2nd edition
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