The story
- Latin · borrowed fromlāmentor“to wail, weep”
- Middle French · borrowed fromlamenter
- English todaylament
A back-formation from lamentation or else from Middle French lamenter and its etymon Latin lāmentor (“to wail, weep”), from lāmentum (“wailing, moaning, weeping”); with formative -mentum, from the root *la-, probably ultimately imitative. Also see latrare.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.