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Monday November 16, 2009

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lugubrious [lu-GOO-bree-us; -GYOO-]

adjective

1. Mournful, dismal, especially in an exaggerated or affected manner.

• The Ricketts family could take control of the team by the end of the year, ending a lugubrious process that began with the $8.2 billion sale of the Tribune Company to the real estate investor Sam Zell days before the start of the 2007 season.
  Richard Sandomir, "Sale of Cubs and Wrigley Clears Important Hurdle", New York Times, Aug 22, 2009
• In the best short stories -- by Poe, Raymond Carver, Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor or Alice Munro -- there is always malaise, if not outright heartache, on the horizon. In less able hands this convention turns lugubrious and contrived. But Meloy's lean, targeted descriptions and her ultimately compassionate eye make this journey hurt so good.
  Samantha Dunn, "BOOK REVIEW; Such wretched webs we weave; Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It Stories", Los Angeles Times, Jul 12, 2009
• The daughters sat down by the table and wept, lugubriously and rather angrily. The sons-in-law drank and looked afflicted.
  D. H. Lawrence (1885 - 1930) An English author, poet, playwright. The Boy in the Bush (1924)

Origin of the Word

Lugubrious, approximately 1601, derives from Latin lugubris "mournful, pertaining to mourning," from lugere "to mourn."